Blog Meets Blog

As you will recall, we kicked off our month of summer fun with a visit from my friend Liz and her son Oliver. Liz wrote about the visit much more promptly than I did (am doing), but rest assured it was a great week.

Last weekend I had some rare free time in our cabin in Estes Park (more on that soon), and I spent some of it catching up on my reading my blog list. I was really touched to read the nice things Liz had to say about her visit here and about our friendship.

I have probably written about this before but Liz and I met at Governor's School East in 1996. We spent 6 weeks becoming lifetime friends. I LOVED everything about GSE, especially getting to know Liz, and when it came time to go home that summer, I was heartbroken--except I wasn't that sad to leave Liz. I knew--I just knew--that we would always be friends.

As things worked out, we were--but also sort of weren't. We thought we might be college roommates, but then went to different universities. After college, we went our separate ways and only rarely wrote each other very short emails. But when somehow--I don't quite remember how--I started reading Liz's blog. Then I started my own blog. Then Liz and I shared some pieces of writing through email, and then she had a baby. Then I had a baby--and we were in touch constantly.

I wouldn't call Liz one of my "mommy friends"-- those are the friends you have just because you are a mom, people you wouldn't really have much to say to if you weren't both sitting on blankets in the park, trying to prevent your babies from eating too much grass. Liz is my friend because she is kind, funny, and super smart, because she is just one of those people, rare in my life at least, that I liked immediately and liked more the more I got to know her. But she has been one of my most important friends who is also a mom. Oliver was born a year and a month before Amelia, and not only has Liz patiently dispensed advice regarding breast pumps, diapers, baby monitors, and God knows what else, watching the adventures of Liz and little G has also, more importantly, given me a model of what life as a mother can look like. Liz is a mom but also a teacher and a writer , a wife, a sister and a daughter, a blogger and a friend to others and someone who takes time for herself--not to mention a pregnant person. And now she is also a PhD student. She wrote that she is nervous about this new venture, understandably so, but if anyone can do it, it's you, Liz! I have no doubts. You will make a truly outstanding professor of education.

Anyway, so Liz and Oliver came to visit! We had a great time, especially considering that due to A and G's different ages and nap schedules, one of them was sleeping for a great part of each day. We managed trips to both the zoo and to Book Babies, and had daily picnics in the park. Liz was very patient with some of Amelia's more difficult nap episodes and my fear of driving on Denver's Interstate 25, which made our travels from and to the airport take longer than they really should have. (I have since conquered that fear--yea me! I am a grownup who can drive on the busiest stretch of interstate in Colorado!--but at the time I insisted on taking the long way.) It was a real treat to have so much time to catch up with Liz and to really meet Oliver, who I have read about extensively but spent little actual time with. He is a fabulous kid. He is calm, happy, loving--and he can put away an impressive number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!



Speaking of the airport, I cried when we dropped them off. Thanks for visiting, Liz. I wish you lived next door, but I know we will be friends wherever we are.

P.S.! The fish oil smell is all gone. :)

11 Months

Amelia was 11 months old on Sunday, September 5!



It's a little hard to believe she will be one year old in less than a month. Although we have been through plenty of days that seemed to last forever, I can see why parents say time passes so quickly.

Here is Amelia last year at this time.



Whew.

We wrapped up our month of visitor and travel this weekend with a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. It has been a great month, busy but very fun. We have really enjoyed having so much company, showing off our new house and new city. Now, I have a lot of catching up to do on the blog and with writing in general. There are 140 messages in my email inbox, something that almost never happens. I like to keep up. And I started and then abandoned a new poetry blog, and I have some ideas for poems. So, I am making September a writing month. Stay tuned.

Eat, Play, Sleep

It's been awhile since I have recorded Amelia's current habits and such and I thought eat, play and sleep would be good organizing topics.

Let's start with the most fun, play:

as you might have noticed from the recent videos, Amelia is a very fun girl. She started crawling at about 9 and a half months and has been on the move ever since. She quickly progressed to pulling up to stand on couches, chairs, benches, and anything else she can reach, including, this week, the bottom of the refrigerator. She likes to take the magnets off of it. She can now stand on both legs without holding onto anything with her hands for several seconds at a time, and has even started to "cruise," or move short distances between items she can hold on to.

Also around the end of 9 months, Amelia discovered books. We were reading this book I got from the library called "Baby Loves Peekaboo." It has flaps that open to reveal hidden cats, bears, toys and babies. The pictures are photographs, not drawings, and A loves to look at "real" babies. So we were reading and all of a sudden she seemed to notice that the could open the flap and see the babies. She was delighted. After that we introduced story time into the bedtime routine--more on that below.

Some of A's other favorite activities are rolling around on a stack of three comforters and pillows on the living room floor, turning the pages of various board books, taking all of the credit and other cards out of my wallet, tackling and biting large stuffed animals, and standing at her toy box, removing toys one at a time. Oh, and throwing things! She loves to throw and roll balls, but also enjoys throwing other toys--and sometimes, while she is eating, she throws spoons, forks, and small pieces of food. We take it as a sign that she is no longer hungry.

Speaking of eating:

Just this week, I FINALLY got Amelia to eat babyfood. As we recall, she has loved solids for some time, and by that I mean actual solids: only food she can pick up herself. She loves cheese, rice, beans, Cheerios, toast, bread, tortillas, tofu, black bean burgers, little bits of spinach, these odd chalky puffs of freeze dried yogurt they now make for babies, and any type of meat she has tried. But she generally avoids being spoon fed with all of her will and might. It may seem easy to put a spoon into a baby's mouth but unless the baby wants the spoon there, it is not. She has a few exceptions to spoonfeeding, such as peaches, instant oatmeal, and ice cream (which she has only had 2 or 3 times), but none of that helps me get more vegetables into her little body--it's hard for her to eat vegetables because generally if they are soft enough for her to chew, they are also too wet and slippery for her to keep hold of. She can pick up peas, but does so only so that she can throw them on the floor. So I have been trying various ways to sneak in the veggies: spreading a thin layer of pureed green beans onto bread, attempting to pass off sauteed yellow pepper as peaches, etc. None of this has really worked. Then I saw this new kind of babyfood that comes in little plastic pouches, like Capri Sun. It's fancy sparkly organic babyfood supposedly made by "real chefs." It has a little tube at the end and while the idea seems to be that you can squeeze as much as you need into a bowl, I thought why couldn't you just squeeze it directly into the baby's mouth.

It turns out this stuff is delicious. (I take Caroline's advice of long ago to always taste whatever you put into your baby"s mouth.) I mean it is really delicious. The roasted sweet potatoes taste like Thanksgiving dinner. If for some reason you ever have to be off solid foods (wisdom teeth removal?), stock up on this stuff. So I have been feeding it to Amelia while she plays. I can't get as much in her while she is officially eating and sitting at her high chair because she starts to want to hold the tube and do it herself and then half of the babyfood, which costs 1 million dollars per ounce, ends up on her face, her clothes, my clothes, and the floor. But while she is playing I can sneak the tube up to her mouth and she will take a sip, realize it is delicious, then take some more. The go back to playing, and repeat.

I have had the most success with the flavors that mix fruits and veggies, like this afternoon's "blueberry pear purple carrot." But I have high hopes for "spinach pear peas" and "pumpkin corn apple."

So that is eating. She is now officially breastfeeding a number of times a day that I can count, which is 7: when she wakes in the morning, again awhile after she wakes up, before her morning nap, about half an hour after her nap, before her afternoon nap, early evening, and bedtime. Then once more at about 4 am.

I guess that sounds like a lot. Actually some books say that a baby will nurse 6-8 times a day by 3 months or something like that. At some point, maybe 5 months, I realized that Amelia was nursing way more than what most books described as common, and I called the DC Breastfeeding Center about it. The LC told me that just like some adults, some babies were grazers. "Sometimes you want a whole meal," she said, "but sometimes you just want a bagel. Sometimes you just want a cup of coffee." Amelia has cut out most of her coffee breaks. When she does nurse now, it's only for about 5 minutes.

Ironically, just when I was ready to move on to sleep, Amelia is waking up from her nap. And I am sure you are all at the edge of your seats about Amelia's sleep! I usually am. So, to be continued...

House Tour: Amelia's Room

Amelia's room has lots of nooks and crannies, so it's hard to get it all in one picture.



This is looking in from the doorway.



To the left is her little crib cave.



To the right is the changing table, some shelves, and the glider.

(A note on the glider: I didn't buy it until we left DC--I got it used from a MOTH right before we left. It is the MOST comfortable piece of furniture ever. I truly wish I had had it from day 1. It you are having a baby, GET A GLIDER, even if you don't think you have enough space. Sacrifice something else. Get a glider.)


A's room is very colorful.



She has a lot of pretty items and artwork, including this toybox, made my her grandmother and other Whimsical Women.



She is standing tall.

Amelia welcomes her cousin...

baby Micah Lyon Sanderford!



He was born the morning of August 11, 2010. We can't wait to meet him!

We're Busy Resting

As July ended, I looked forward to August as a month of rest* and relaxation. Beginning July 31st, we've had visitors or been traveling almost every day. Liz and Oliver came to visit, then we went camping, then Amelia and I went to visit grandparents in NC. Yesterday we had a one-day break in the action, and this afternoon I pick up DC Laura from the airport! Next week Jim and Luli will stop by on their way to visit the newly-arrived Micah, and then Meg and Sophie will visit. We will finish up with a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park over Labor Day.

So that doesn't exactly sound restful, I guess, but I have happily put writing and major errands or household chores on hold. I had gotten into the habit of overplanning for Amelia's naptimes, and then being stressed the whole time she slept because there was no way I could get everything done. I vowed to devote August to going with the flow, so I just do whatever I feel like doing while Amelia sleeps. Today it involves sitting around in yoga clothes (a step toward actually doing yoga? We shall see), and eating figs and blogging.

I have been enjoying homemaking. It is not all that boring. For one thing, Amelia has become super action funtime baby. She is very, very interesting. She crawls and stands and laughs and throws balls and turns the pages of board books. She chats and sings to herself while she plays. She can entertain herself with a pan and a spoon while I clean the kitchen. She "helps" me fold laundry (by systematically knocking down stacks of folded clothes). So it is both more fun to hang out with her and more possible to get a few things done around the house with her around than it was 9 or 6 or 3 months ago. I have actually always somewhat enjoyed tasks like cleaning and going through mail, within reason, probably because of the sense of accomplishment I get from creating order. Of course there are many moments when it all gets exhausting and seems perpetual--which of course it is. But as long as I don't set my sights too high and overplan, and think of it as what it is, a job with pros and cons, lately the homemaking enterprise has been rather satisfying.

In other Amelia news, I think she might have said her first word. She recently learned to wave, and two or three times she has said what sounds like "bye-bye" while waving at people or things we were leaving behind. Of course "bye-bye" sounds a lot like "ba-ba," which she says a lot. So it's too early to say. But it is exciting still.

She has also learned to kiss, bit wet kisses. She lunges at you, mouth open, dripping with drool. The French-kissing baby.

What else? I have been trying to read more, to some success. I have some ideas for new poems to write in September. I plan to post more pictures, including pictures of our camping trip, soon!


*Well, as much rest as you can get with a baby who still isn't sleeping through the night. Amelia slept through the night for maybe a week or so--it was heavenly--and then started sitting up in her crib. And not being able to lie back down. When we tried to let her just figure it out, she fell asleep in a forward bend, her head between her knees. So I am up with her about 3 times a night again after she sits or even stands in her crib. I am currently trying to figure out how to solve this, simultaneously hoping it passes suddenly and SOON.

Standing Tall

She's delighted with herself!