Forever Fascinating

Momma's happy hobbies

 It has been far too long since I have written here, sweet pea, though rest assured your story has continued dense with discovery in these unmentioned days.  I've kept a diary to Uncle Kelson, who is in Italy, and my hope is to transcribe those entries here eventually.

Ready for the World

I have broken my fast because I had to tell you how irresistibly fascinating your linguistic development has been.  You seem to take the same joy in labeling what you recognize that I do, and you speak or sign extremely often.  Yesterday I was wearing a shirt with a Remington insignia on the pocket and you looked at it and said "Deer" with a grin.  I had no idea you knew that word; I don't remember teaching you, and there are no drawings of deer in any of your books.  You probably got it from Signing Time, the one show I put on the t.v. for you.  You've taught me and Daddy 3 signs that you learned before we did, because you've paid such closer attention to that show than we have -- bus, table and... what was the last one... game, I think.  A few weeks ago we discovered that you can translate from sign to English -- you'll say what I sign -- and you have at least more than 50 signs, probably closer to 100.  Most of them you know the words for but a lot are too hard to say.  Usually both data points help me interpret; the voice clarifies the sign while the sign clarifies the voice.

Loving your dinosaur

Your pronunciation has very consistent patterns, errors I guess, so consistent that I am repeatedly caught off guard.  The other day you were learning the word "sick" and you said "yit" -- of course.  You substitute a T for a K in almost every context -- if I sign "grandma" you translate it "Tate" for Mama Kate, although I did hear you say cup (instead of tup) a couple weeks ago. That one makes sense; they sound a lot alike.  Your other consistent pattern is rather baffling -- any words that start with a sibilant (an s, sh, or z) you will begin with a Y instead.  You pointed to my santa hat tonight and said "Yanta."  A zipper is a yipper, but the trash is the trash and your nose is your nose -- it seems only to happen at the beginning of words.  You replace F with W at the beginning of words (figa is wida, since the g turns to a d too) but with a TH at the end of words (Geoff is deth, since j comes out like d).  You often say the word no but the sign for no you translate with Arapaho -- you say hiitah, since the word is hiikah -- given that we usually sign no only as a command, when we are telling you not to do something, and that's also when we use Arapaho.

Signing "Help" (sideways) because you want down

It's late, and I should go -- it's after midnight, and Daddy is in the bedroom sleeping with you.  Today was 12/21/12, an exciting day in a funny way -- a big urban legend about Mayan calendrical prophecies got kind of out of hand to the degree that people were half-heartedly predicting either that the world would end today or everything will transform dramatically.  We'll see.  You'll transform dramatically either way.  Your development is like a continuous Easter Egg hunt -- every day you have some happy surprise for us, some joyful word or new skill.  Love you baby.  A whole bunch.

Ex utero exactly as long as in utero: update

Miss Amelie,

As you sit on the floor knocking yourself in the head with a near-empty bottle of breastmilk, I am amazed how much you have changed after being outside of me exactly as long as you were inside me.  39 weeks and 1 day ago you were born; 39 weeks and 1 day before that you were conceived.  Here's an update of your life.

Your body and movement
 Your eyes have become an icy crystalline blue, and you effuse such joy with your near-toothless, open-mouthed smile that you cheered up an entire packed Department of Motor Vehicle office while we waited in line.  You look like a porcelain cupid, your skin a delicate white with naturally rosy cheeks (which you got from Daddy, who calls it ruddy on himself).  You have very fine, wispy red hair, a strawberry-golden sheen that shows bronze in the sunlight and curls up below your ears like the Gerber Baby's.  I dress you as beautifully as I can -- smocked dresses, eyelet, ruffles, velvet, embroidery -- and you sometimes wear your nicest outfits even if we don't go out.  Daddy likes footie pajamas when we're home and overalls or jumpers for going out. You were born 9 lbs 4 oz and are now about 21 lbs, still big (I hear a lot of she-never-misses-a-meal-does-she) but regressing toward the mean, now in the 80th percentiles; you are long too, between 27 and 28 inches, which is also in the 80th percentile.  You look weirdly lean to me now, but you still have a fold like a perma-bracelet around your wrists.

You crawl just like a little wind-up toy, each arm and each knee moving singly and deliberately, and you're getting so fast that yesterday you made it from the play room through the living room into the kitchen and had your hands in the dog water before I realized you were missing (about 2 minutes).  When you stop to focus on something or reach for something, you adopt what Daddy calls a hurtler's stretch with one leg straight and the other bent and behind you. You have stood alone only twice, once with my ex-advisor Dr. Andy Cowell (who stood you upright, my shriek of joy echoing through CU's entire Linguistics office) and once of your own choosing.    You pull yourself up to standing but do not walk around holding onto furniture (yet).  You currently have a bruise on your forehead, a scratch on your nose, and a patch of scratch on your knee because you want to move faster than you can balance so you do a lot of diving.  Doula Stephanie's son Liam was playing with you on his driveway when we discovered you had a scratch on your knee -- he was humbled in complete admiration and said "Awesome!  She didn't cry!"

Your vocalizations and moods
You don't cry very often, and some experienced mothers like Aunt Sarah and Erin Donelly think you are spoiling me rotten by being so cheerful and easy.  You complain in "iiii" before you cry; we think of it as your check-engine light.  When I tickle you you laugh and if we are in the playroom with the TV off you get to talking up a storm sometimes.  I am just in love with your voice.  When you were born it sounded just like I sound to myself in my head.  And now you are awakening from your nap...


Your phonetic inventory thus far is varied and fascinating; Daddy said this morning that one of the surprises of fatherhood has been how greatly he enjoys listening to your voice.  Sometimes you listen to your voice as if you were testing a violin -- you articulate slowly, changing your utterance only very slightly in one way (volume, pitch, the shade of the vowel or the voicing on the consonant like d to t).  You fixate on one pattern pretty much every day, and we never know what you'll pick -- one day it's hitow, hidow, hitow -- the next day it's wow, wow, awow, yawow. You have said 'dadadada' for many months and you still do it every day, but you've never yet said 'mama' at all.  Right now you're on 'ba' and 'bwa bwa' so I'm hoping M isn't far away -- the only difference between B and M being nasalization -- but it'll be quite a while before it has meaning, I'm sure.  You've just barely begun to show an understanding of the sign for nurse, because when you're hungry and I sign nurse you ramp into making monkey noises the same way you do when you see my breasts.  You also as of last week have seemed to have been making the same movement with your hand more often while nursing than otherwise, but you do not mimic gestures or sounds at all that I have seen.

  

Your behavior, eating and sleeping

And now, an hour later, I return after nursing you back to semi-sleep (what Daddy and I call sleeping on tap, in which you awaken the instant you stop nursing) -- and reading for a long time.  This is a really large part of my experience of your infancy that I'd not thought to mention, but I read a TON, because I am often faced with deciding between remaining beside you (and reading) or you waking up.  You have reached most for books by Orson Scott Card, perhaps because I read all of both series he wrote related to Ender's Game, something like 3000 pages, in January and February.  I am currently beginning Survivor Moms to help understand my experience of your birth more compassionately.

Your Daddy has an easier time getting you to sleep  -- oh, you're awakening!  I boobytrapped the pillow so a dangling hairband will fall off it when you wake up, because you finally slept again on top of the bed and I didn't want to put you in your pack-n-play (surrogate crib) or you'd have awoken.  But you're sleeping on the bed alone, so I have to get you as soon as you do wake up -- you haven't yet.

So your Daddy puts you on the bed between his body and his left arm, your head on his shoulder, and you cry a bit before you fall asleep for naps; at night he lifts you out of your playpen when you start crying and puts you on his bare chest where you nestle your cheek against him, listen to him breathe, and fall back asleep.

You nap unpredictably because I haven't instituted any kind of schedule.  All my life I've resented having to follow a routine -- but, as Doula Steph says, if you don't institute order you can't complain about the crazy.  I am almost sufficiently frustrated to discipline myself enough to put you down at the same time every day, but not quite.

I'm almost convinced that I need to start feeding you more predictably too, because right now I still nurse you when you want to and feed you solids if I feel like it (which is maybe once a day, maybe twice, maybe none).  I don't do the pureed thing; we follow what's called Baby Led Weaning, a sort of modified form in which you eat mostly bananas and avocados but also anything else I feel like giving you.  Fortunately nothing ever causes you intestinal upset.  This morning we went to breakfast with Nana Julie, a kind woman I met when you were an infant who has adopted you as a granddaughter and takes care of you -- and so you had whatever fit on my fork, potatoes and egg frittatta.  Sometimes you gag but I never intervene.  Twice you've had to... produce a bit of a current to get the object dislodged, lost rather a bit of what you'd recently eaten, but you always take care of it yourself.

Yesterday you had your first Indian Tacos and your first fry bread at your first powwow, the Denver March Powwow, where we went with Nana Julie's brother Harry.  You were entranced by the dancers and the drums -- you grinned, clapped your hands, waved your arms around, and didn't sleep for 6 hours.  In April I plan to take you to Wind River Reservation to meet my Arapaho family.  Our Arapaho family, neiteheiho' hinono'eino'.

Our parenting
Our primary rule when deciding stuff like whether to comfort you when you cry -- which surprisingly can be a stressful decision, pressure being what it is to cultivate independence even in infants in our country -- our unchanging standard is to follow our instinct.  That's what my mother seemed to learn through the first 5 of us kids, the thing she did the most differently with your Uncle Kelson -- by then she did exactly what she felt she should.  Other people could advise her until they were blue in the face, thank you very much, and she'd do exactly as she felt was best for her child.  My logic is that no matter how fiercely I love you and pour my heart into making good decisions, you'll end up in a therapist's office eventually, so the best I can do is stay true to what feels deep in my heart to be best for you.  When you have cried to a point that you no longer seem capable of calming yourself, I help you, whatever time of day or night.

Partially that's because our 2nd guiding principle comes from physiological scientific research (The Science of Parenting is the best book) and a fascinating field called ethnopediatrics, which describes the vastly different standards of what must be done for children according to the norms of cultures as disparate as the Masai and the Amish (see Our Babies, Our Selves).  My conclusion is that whatever we do, your system will adapt; secondarily, babies evolved separately from adults, and your basic design hasn't changed since humans were hunter-gatherers, so the nurturing style most natural to your physiology is one that mimics the mothering of a nomadic woman living in a group of people.  That means holding you and feeding you whenever you need me to.  That jives with neurological evidence which shows that in the same way an infant's immune system is primarily based in the antibodies of breast milk, so does your nervous system (especially in the first weeks and months) rely heavily on physical contact with mine to calm you down.  You need my heartbeat the same way you need my milk.  I carry you in a sling whenever we leave the house and you sleep in our bedroom.  It feels right.

You feel right.  I can't wait to see what happens next.  Congratulations, sweet pea.  Thank you for coming -- hohou tohno'useen.

The Moment

Miss Amelie,

You have almost outgrown  your side-car!

 You're sleeping, and you have been for long enough that I've microwaved up lunch, poured myself a soda, and consumed most of it while reading Facebook -- so I am likely to hear your cry of awakening any second.  This is The Moment I had never experienced before your birth, never conceived of -- but every parent must know it well.  This is The Moment in which I get to choose what to do -- dishes?  thank-you cards? clean up the overwhelming clutter of our home?  exercise?  laundry?  Blog entry wins, because it hasn't in so long, and your precious infancy is beginning to pass very quickly.

You started laughing, rarely, at 4 months

  Outside our little house the sun is sparkling on diamond-studded snow.  Just now while I nursed you to sleep the golden filament of your magic hair whisped about on the flannel receiving blanket with which we protect the sheets from your continuous spitting up and drooling.  You have one single magic hair an easy 3 inches long, because for some reason that one individual hair got a jump on all the others and was an inch or two long at your birth.  Every time I check for it I am worried this will be the time it has fallen out, but so far it is holding strong, and plucking it out to put it in your baby book just seems like an evil idea.  Your head smells warm and sweet to me; your little hands are so pudgy that they dimple inwards at the knuckles and you have a permanent rubber-band-like crease at your wrist.

God-Daddy Geoffey sponsors your anti-pink wardrobe

You seem to have firsts at every turn.  Today you went to your first movie in a theater -- the new Muppet Movie -- and amazingly for your age, you were quiet the whole time, even grinning at the giant screen during the dance numbers.  You play with sounds and facial expressions like fascinating toys, and every three or four days you come up with a new sound.  Most recent (and one of my favorites) is the near-silent "bop" noise of opening your mouth without saying anything, like a fish blowing bubbles.  Last week you started actually blowing bubbles, spit bubbles, which I still strongly prefer to your new sound the week before -- you started experimenting to see how mind-numbingly high-pitched you could shriek.  I was very relieved that you didn't decide to do that in the dark warmth of the movie theater today.  Every night we read a book in Spanish; sometimes I remember to sign "nurse" before you eat but usually I forget.  Our plan (my plan, but Daddy humors me) is to teach you some really basic words in Arapaho.  Probably I'll forget that too.

You have reserves about THIS game, but the Wii is usually fun

  You've only this last week begun to cry in a way that I am choosing on occasion not to indulge.  One of the books I trust most (The Science of Parenting by  -- oh, there you are now, waking up... if I can get to you fast enough you might sleep for a long time!  So either that or this post ends in parentheses :)
**Two hours later
Just woke up myself, to the dogs' hungry growling, at which you awoke beside me.  I had fallen asleep as you nursed, cuddled in bed, and I guess I needed it -- last night we tried "really" co-sleeping and I didn't get unconscious much.  So many days pass this way, with sweet unintended time like that -- Moments come and gone under the sleepily falling snow...

4-1/2 months: Latest developments

Really, you're almost 5 months old now - just another 6 days.  It's hard to believe that your first Thanksgiving is coming up next week, and you'll be 6 months old on your first Christmas!  Fortunately, there's no real need to get you much this year; even next year you'll just be getting the hang of presents.  :o)

You have been growing up fast... literally.  Your 4-month checkup and shots were yesterday, and you're in the 99th percentile for height (I guess they call it "length" since you can't stand up yet).  I knew you were going to be a big kid, but good grief!  And the shots went much easier this time around.  You cried like crazy for a couple of minutes, but we got you distracted quickly, kept you moving in your bouncing jumper thingy, and massaged your legs several times, and you were fine the rest of the day.

You're getting better at rolling over, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time.  Next thing you know you'll be crawling and pulling yourself up... then we'll actually have to start baby-proofing the house.  Damn.  But you're laughing and giggling more every day, which is so gratifying.  Your smile when you wake up is so validating - it makes everything so worthwhile.  I really love you, little girl, and I can't wait to see what comes next...

Om nom nom... yummy baby

(The photos in this post were from a photo shoot we had with Light Affect Studios on 11/15.  Many, many thanks to Bryan Dodd and Doug Flint - you guys did an amazing job!)

What's in a year: from contraception to cooing

Bubble,

Two years ago today, on September 14th of 2009, I started a health project (NOT a diet) because Daddy just dropped me off in Virginia to do a 3-month internship with Rosetta Stone's Endangered Language Program -- leaving me with the time and impetus to change my life.  The project was a great success and I was very healthy by the time it ended a year later on September 14th of 2010.  I was feeling so vibrant and alive that I asked Daddy to go to lunch with me so I could ask him a very important question that I'd been thinking about for a long time, even praying for hours while I climbed the 14-er Pikes Peak the week before.  I asked him to consider a hiatus from contraception; I asked him to consider inviting you into our lives.  We had fish-and-chips and bangers-n-mash at Connor O'Neals off Pearl Street in Boulder; I had a celebratory Strongbow cider (this being the last day of a year of ultra-health) and he had a Guinness even though he was wearing his RTD uniform.  Here's what I wrote in my diary on the sticky dark-wood bar table after he left:

**9/14/10 Connor O's**
Just told Brian I want to start trying!  His reaction was not negative, only very practical, hesitant and thoughtful (of course).  I asked our baby's spirit to go with him, help bring images to mind, help him consider -- and see what his or her father would be like.  We are all deciding, together.  I thanked Brian for considering it and told him I understand it is not a foregone conclusion.  I do...
  Child of mine, come play this afternoon.  Go tickle Brian's mind when you're satisfied with mine.  I look forward to your point of view.
  Mom -- oh, Mom -- let this happen!  As is best for us all, let this happen.
  I love you all --
-Muff-
**
 You accepted our invitation so quickly that, given how pregnancy technically begins two weeks before fertilization, I officially got pregnant a week before we even had this conversation, right around my hours-long prayer on the mountainside.  Since the beginning of the pregnancy co-occured with the end of my herculean weight-loss success, I gained an enormous ton of weight with you, despite exercising incessantly and eating primarily quinoa and spinach (or so it felt).  A good childhood friend, Tiffany Bressan, even printed me a t-shirt that said "Ask me if it's twins and I'll hurt you" so I would have the courage to leave my house that last trimester.

Maybe next year today I'll be somewhere near as healthy as I was a year ago, but even if I'm not, my life will be immeasurably richer.  As I've been typing this you've been cooing to me in your soft little voice, flashing your stunningly beautiful eyes around the dim room, reminding me that everything that bought me the prize of you, absolutely every moment that preceded your entry into my storyline -- all of it is made worthwhile by your coming.

Thank you so much for hearing me, and for joining our lives.  You are my reward.  I love you.

Sushi-grade Joy and Newborn Parenting

This was excerpted from an email to an old friend who is expecting his first baby in a month.

Dude, this baby-raising this is just a massive adventure.  It's nowhere near the hell I was expecting.  So much of it feels good -- it is true that having the time to do the dishes becomes a luxury, but it literally feels like a luxury -- not at all like the drudgery it once was.  That's the misunderstanding I had, that even parental luxury is a single person's drudgery, but really it's just that sushi-grade relaxation and happiness is suddenly absolutely free and a lot easier to come by.  Waking up refreshed with energy would no doubt generate sushi-grade joy for me at the moment.

I don't think I'm doing a very good job explaining this, but the coolest part is that it's a very satisfying adventure, and it feels to me very much like living in a country where I don't speak the language -- which I've always loved.  The learning curve is insane, but most of it is very, very low-stress.  Like writing a dissertation if it cried when you ignored it but then smiled at you with gorgeous crystalline eyes after you finished two pages.

:o)
-finn-
p.s. Hey, I'm going to use this on her blog.  Brian's using a bottle of breastmilk to put her down for a nap right now, for the first time while I'm home, which is utterly awesome.  You're going to be a kick-ass Dad, and birth really brought Brian and me closer.

What you're like and what we do

 

Amelie,

Before you get any older I should update you on what you're like, and this video is an example of what we do: we hang out with you in a sling a lot, usually with your canine siblings, little Australian Shepherds named (tiny) Tucker, (medium) Maddy and (big) Baxter.  We hike through the Rocky Mountains where it's lush and green, and this video is from the first hike we all took together.

You are an intense little baby, very focused.  We spend a great deal of time nursing, of course, and when you were very new you would glare at me with one eye closed -- you looked like a tiny disgruntled samurai.  You would usually nurse four "rounds" at a time, a round being one session of about 10 or 15 minutes after which you would fall asleep.  Daddy would read to me while we nursed during the first weeks before he went back to work, especially in the middle of the night.  You slept through the night for the first time when you were just 4 days old, and now at 10 weeks you average about 6 hours before nursing half-asleep and then sleeping another 2 or 3 hours.  Our house is very tiny so you share a bedroom with us, and your bed is a little side-car that attaches to our mattress right next to me.  You look like a humongous burrito all swaddled up in your blanket and propped between other blankets so you can't roll over.  You also spend a lot of time sleeping on or next to Daddy, and I am very fond of taking pictures of the two of you.

You are usually in a good mood, so we take advantage of your amiability by dressing you up in adorable and sometimes funny clothes.  You make great faces.  The flower on your headband in this picture became a good friend, and you smile up at it where it hangs now over your changing table.  Your best friend in the world is our ceiling fan.  This morning you woke up, looked glaringly right over Daddy's shoulder, caught sight of the ceiling fan and broke into a grin.

You were particularly distressed the day you said goodbye to Uncle Kelson, who moved to Italy for college when you were two months old.  Uncle Kelson is exactly as much older than you as I am older than him, and I hope very much you two grow to have as strong and loving a relationship as he and I do.  I also hope he teaches you Italian.
A lot of people love you and have come over to hold you, especially your scientist-turned-soccer-referee godfather Geoff. Aunt Sarah and her family also come to visit, and we go down there; Julia especially loves to hold you and play with you, though you sometimes seem almost as big as she is.  Another great friend is Mama Kate, your honorary grandmother, who loves to hold you for long quiet hours (which is wondrous kind for me).When you were 8 weeks old we started going swimming in a warm little baby pool.  It must have reminded you of the bathtub, because we always nurse together in the bathtub, and as soon as you felt the warm water on your skin you started sticking your tongue out like you always do when you're hungry.  There was no one around other than Uncle Bagel your swim teacher, so I nursed you -- and you fell right asleep!

I spend so many hours nursing you every day that I often amuse myself by reading.  You are just now starting to take naps without me having to stay lying down next to you, which is a relief, but it is also very relaxing to watch you breathe.  You are so beautiful you look like you're made of porcelain, and I often spend long periods of time softly tracing your cheek with my fingertips.  You smell good too.