Baby ruminations (16-months-old)

Nora is changing so fast day by day. Every new development opens new doors and I see her becoming such a little person. Now that she can walk and run, we can take a morning walk down the street, holding hands. It seems like such a little thing, but I love it. I can let her explore the yard, pick flowers, point at birds and trees and pick up stones.

She takes in so much — I can see her mind working when I say a word she doesn’t know. She stares at me with a very curious, kind of serious expression, and then she’ll imitate the sound in her own way. Since she started talking, she’d been saying “Dada” for “Baby.” One night, she just said, “baby,” pointing at her doll in the crib. (It sounded a little like “bee bee.”) And since then, she’s been saying it correctly. What was it that made her decide to say it like that? What clicked? Was it that she got three more molars? Or just that she got a little older? Since then, she’s developed a little bit of a love/hate relationship with the baby. She gets very emotional,  sometimes throwing the doll on the floor or out of the crib, and then crying for her. My theory is that it has something to do with her learning to say the word correctly. She did this kind of a thing when she learned to say, “night night.” She’d stand up in her crib and yell it, sounding very distraught. Now, it’s not as big of a deal. Or, the baby thing might be because she’s been spending time with a real one. Her friend baby Ian comes over sometimes to play, and Nora likes to pet his head, lean her head against him, try to feed him her cup while saying “yumm” and put a blanket on him. I don’t know why this would make her more emotional about her doll — but somehow, it makes sense to me.

She’s also testing her independence and her boundaries as she throws food on the floor, climbs and jumps on the furniture or heads toward an electric outlet saying, “no no no.” This is definitely a challenge. But it’s really interesting to see her becoming her own person and deciding how to behave. Occasionally my attempts at discipline rub off on her. When she’s about to throw food, I’ll say, “Put it in your cup when you’re done,” or “give it to me.” And she gets it. She’ll do that sometimes. But sometimes, it’s just more fun to toss it on the floor.

I feel like she’s always been here. She is a little person when you see her standing up, but she has such a presence and such a personality. Strange sometimes to remember that this funny little toddler is the same little newborn (well, 9lbs 9 ounces, not so little) who we brought home from the hospital because she already looks so different and acts so different. And strange that she’ll one day be an adult woman. At the same time, I feel like I really know the essence of her. I’ve known her since she was just a little bean in my stomach. 

Bear Mountain Lodge

Our trip to Bear Mountain Lodge was a blast. There’s so much to do there with a little one. There’s a lake to walk around, paddle boats you can rent, a playground, a zoo with a bear, an eagle, an owl, some fish, snakes, coyotes, etc. This is maybe not something I would have cared about pre-baby, but there’s a big, wide, expansive, green lawn. Nora could run free! You can eat brunch there at the renovated restaurant, which I’d really recommend. It’s $30 for an all-you-can-eat buffet and the food was yummy. Here’s some of the highlights:

Okay, this is actually in Cold Spring. It’s another fifteen minutes from Bear Mountain Lodge. We love it here.

So much fun now that Nora can explore the great outdoors!

She’s gone vertical

Our little adventurer has discovered how to climb, and climb she does. When you realize you could stand on a box, a chair a couch or a bench and see the world from a whole new perspective, why not climb all day long? The problem is, she does not quite understand the concept of gravity. She stands on her perch high on an armchair, leaning over the edge. And there’s nothing funnier than seeing mommy come running toward her, waving her hands in the air, saying, “No, no, no, no!”

“No, no, no!” she repeats, giggling. Such fun. It’s not fun when she falls off the side and lands on her head, giving her a big bruise on her cheek. Then, it’s tears. But, that doesn’t stop her from playing the game again a few minutes later.

How do I stop this from becoming a game? When I say a stern, “No,” she just laughs and goes at it again.

I’ve read that babies at this age are not able to use their executive functioning skills yet, so they might know right from wrong, but that doesn’t mean they can stop themselves from doing the wrong thing. They might say, “no biting, no biting, no biting” while they’re biting someone. And it’s too soon for timeouts because she’s not going to sit quietly by herself and ruminate on what she did. The only solution, I’ve heard, is to consistently say no and redirect.

Every new stage poses new and interesting challenges. I didn’t know we’d have to baby proof vertically, because she’s kind of short. But now that she’s learned how to climb, she’ll get up on the couch and start shaking the big mirror hanging above it. Our living room has been functioning like a play pen. We’ve got all of our furniture pressed up against the walls, we’ve got those safety plugs in, we have gates, we’ve removed all floor lamps, and we’ve put up gates in the doorways to keep her in the room when we want to. Now, are we going to have to take the chairs out of the room? Today, I tried turning up the cushions so it’s harder to climb, but I have no doubt she’ll find a way around that. But what’s best, to remove all potential trouble spots, or to keep setting limits and redirecting? You know, ideally, she’ll eventually understand gravity a little better. I am a little nervous that she’ll try to climb out of her crib one of these days, though.

I’d like to do activities that will foster her adventurous spirit while keeping her safe.

Good thing it’s spring, because we don’t have to spend so much time in the living room. We can get outside and explore the world. There are flowers to pick, birds and airplanes to hear, trees and bunnies to see. 

Do you have a little climber? I’d love to know!

Springtime!

Spriiiiiiing! We’ve been having a great time over here. Nora likes to roam around the yard, pick up sticks, point to birds and trees and bunnies (more on that in a bit) and touch (yank) the flowers. Now that she’s really on the go, I’m really on the go too. Everything is new and she wants to explore it all.

And who’s this, you might ask? This is the enormous bunny who hangs out in our yard. Is he an escaped house bunny, a pregnant bunny or just a well fed wild bunny? Who knows? Nora thought he was so funny. We walked a little closer to get a good look and he started hopping at us so I ran us back inside. Yes, I took my baby in my arms and I ran from a bunny. I’m not ashamed.

*

To celebrate the nice weather, Nora and I took a day trip to Cold Spring. We walked down to the water.

We sat outside, ate lunch together, and Nora said “hi!” to everyone who passed us by.

Can’t wait for more Spring! Thanks for checking in.

Restaurant Review: OD’s Tavern in Nyack

Here’s a link to an article I wrote. I hope you enjoy!

http://sweissdesigns.com/writing/hook-march2013.htm

Painting the fireplace

We painted the fireplace white to update it just a little. I’m not saying it was easy. The paint sprayer came to life in the middle of our project and we could not turn it off. Sprayer thought, if ever I were to have a moment in my life to really be me, to just let loose, this would be it. While I applaud Sprayer’s boldness, it made things tough for us. Sprayer got Kevin in the face. Kevin, of course, couldn’t see with white paint clouding his vision, so he started stumbling around, and meanwhile, Sprayer went to town, just doing what he does, spraying the hardwood floor, the stereo, the ottoman. “Stop, stop, stop!” I yelled. This was not helpful. (Sometimes, in emergency mode, I freeze and yell things rather than springing to action.) “I can’t see, I can’t see!” Kevin said. Eventually, Kevin wrestled Sprayer down, I dotted Kevin’s white face with a paper towel and we cleaned up the offending white paint before it dried. Whew!

Before:

After:

We started with a white wash, meaning, we diluted the paint with water. (1 part paint, 4 parts water.) Then we brushed it on. That wasn’t working well because the brush was very drippy and the paint wasn’t sticking to the black (mortar?) between the bricks. That’s when Kevin remembered Sprayer, and then the paint went on much smoother (until aforementioned accident.) It worked well when Kevin sprayed and I brushed the paint around to even it out. It was also good to have a wet cloth nearby to wipe any drips. 

Here we were halfway through:

The first coat looked like this (bad):

We stood back and looked at our work.

“What do you think?” Kevin asked.

“Um, I like it?” I said.

I hated it but didn’t want to say so because I was the one who wanted to start this project at 8pm on a weeknight. I had done some research before starting, and thought a white wash would be a good option for us so the brick showed through a little. But the problem was the black between the bricks just looked dirty and unfinished.

“Maybe we should try another coat,” Kevin said.

Whew! Glad we were in agreement.

It took maybe another hour or two to keep piling on the layers of paint with a paintbrush, making sure to get in between the bricks. I like that you can still sort of see the brick underneath. We kept the paint pretty thin.

So, to recap:

Before:

After:

After with rugs and pictures and whatnot:

What do you think?

Dada

Nora points at herself in the mirror and says, “Dada!” She says Dada when she sees a picture of herself, a picture of a baby on the side of the diaper box or baby food jar. She stumbles around, holding two Dadas in each hand and repeats “Dada dada dada dada” over and over again. (By the way, she walks now. Can’t believe I haven’t posted about that yet!) She points and says Dada with such an earnest expression each time, waiting for my response, as if this is really something she needed to get off her chest.

“Dada,” she says.

“Uh huh, baby,” I say. 

She nods once. “Dada.”

On an airplane ride back from Florida, Nora spent the trip peering over the seat behind us to point at a boy. “Dada!” she said in a squeal. “Dada!”

“I think you have the wrong person,” the boy said, a little embarrassed.

This week, we took a little trip to the library and the librarians were cooing at Nora. A fifty-ish man told Nora she was going to be a heart breaker. “She’s a beautiful baby,” he said. Nora pointed at him (technically behind him at a little kid) and said, “Dada.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Oh, no I’m not your Dada” he said, as if she were implying, “Thank you for the compliment. You are my father now.”

My husband says it’s confusing when he hears her saying “Dada dada dada” from her crib in the morning, because in his sleepy state, he thinks she’s calling out for him. When he goes in to check on her, she’s reaching over the crib to the baby doll which has taken a plunge.

She knows who her father is, though. She just doesn’t call him Dada quite yet. But he’s in the club. How do I know? Because she puts a hand on his chest, gazes up at him and tells him, in her little voice, “Mama.”