Lurch

It's weird how suddenly your kid goes from complete confusion about a thing to *BANG* knowing just what to do with it. It's like they read the manual when you weren't looking.

Dessa has two great standup/walking support toys. One I showed pictures of already and is a constant favorite. The joy on Dessa's face when we pull it out is complete. She loves to stand with it and make a lot of noise with its various keys, flipper things and various other moving parts. When she gets a little taller, or possibly when she's just a bit more stable in her walking we'll flip the handy switch that turns it from a non-moving toy to a moving one and she'll be unstoppable.

The other toy is shorter. It's a lion and until lately she was simply fascinated with it's face - and who wouldn't be? The nose lights up, it has big friendly eyes, felt hair and little bug things attached to the side which I assume are supposed to be friends of the lion's but bear a striking resemblance to parasites. No matter. The lion is always good for a laugh. At first we tried setting her up behind it and showing her how to push it along but she wasn't really getting it. She'd walk with it if you were holding her, but on her own she'd push it ahead and keep her feet still so that she was a bridge... until she lost her balance and fell forward (we'd catch her of course, but it wasn't so fun for her to fall and it wasn't good for my blood pressure either).

Then, suddenly, on Tuesday... she got it. She just... went. Dave was behind her but she didn't need him holding her. She could balance, she could compensate for the movement of the toy and her own center of gravity. It was... stunning.

It only took me until today to get decent video of it. I'm sort of slow sometimes. Unlike my kid.

Posted by GoddessKristin on 04/24/08 at 07:33 PM [link]

The New Moves

Dessa's becoming a real mover and shaker these days. She's working on her standing skills and can go for up to half a minute or so with no support. Her recovery skills are getting better by the day so she can balance for longer and longer times, and now all she wants to do is stand up. She fights when we try to hold her and she will have nothing to do with sitting and playing with her toys anymore. She'd rather stand and try to bend down to reach them, thanks. You can see in her face that she's dying to walk across the room but she knows she can't quite do it yet. It's frustrating to her.

She figured out clapping last week and now she claps for everything. We go, "Yaaaaaay!" and she grins and claps. Someone on TV claps and she's right there with them.

The cat could not be reached for comment.

She's also working on a new form of peekaboo, which is turning her top half to the side to hide behind stationary objects, or sometimes nothing at all. She'll do it whenever you (or anyone in the room, including on TV), says, "Peekaboo!" She honestly thinks she's hiding when she does this:



The kid is all into kisses now, too. She stays absolutely still for Eskimo kisses - it's hilarious. You say, "Dessa, give me Eskimo kisses" and she stops and concentrates so you can move in and rub noses. She doesn't rub back yet, but she freezes completely and waits. It's too much. And she laughs like anything when I give her butterfly kisses. Thinks it's a riot.

So with all the new interaction, we have a new bedtime routine. For Easter I got her one of those Little Golden books with Elmo and before bed we read it together. At the end of the book Elmo asks for a kiss and at first I leaned the book toward her and sort of tapped her nose with it to indicate a kiss. That lasted about 2 nights. Now every page she sees Elmo on, she leans forward to kiss (mouth wide open). It's too cute. There's also a page where one of the Muppets is playing peekaboo with another and when we reach that one, she turns her whole body as if she's playing peekaboo too. She's totally into it and won't go to bed now unless she's had her story.

I know because I tried and it wasn't pretty. Fortunately it's a short book. I'm no fool.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 04/17/08 at 10:41 AM [link]

Good morning. Your house is ugly.

Sometimes things fall into place in weird ways. Take yesterday for instance.

Actually, I should back up a little. Dave and I have been in this house since October, 2001. Slowly, slowly, we're doing those home improvements all homeowners are faced with. We redid the guest bathroom a few years ago. Last year we redid the kitchen. At the same time, we removed all the pink tile from the landing and family room and replaced it with Amtico linoleum that looks like wood flooring but doesn't scratch like it (the stuff is amazing). We replaced the aluminum framed windows with double paned. Got new blinds and curtains.

The List of Things To Do Around The House (known around here as just The List, as in, "Crap, that pipe is leaking. Put it on The List"), ever lengthening, gets tackled in one way or another every spring. We never get everything done, because then if we did we'd have to die or something, right? Isn't that the rule? You buy a house, you work on it and work on it and work on it and when you're finally done with everything... you're too old to enjoy it.

This spring we're again looking at The List and prioritizing. We have the ability to do some bigger stuff than usual at the moment, and Dessa's arrival has spurred us to look into redoing our yard in a major overhaul. Currently the yard is weedy and generally crappy looking but even at its best it's not ideal. There's a smallish patio consisting of these rough paving brick-stone things that are actually meant for building retaining walls. Dangerous when you're wearing high heels and impossible to ride a bike or Big Wheels over (not that I'm doing any of that. I'm thinking of my kid). These stones-cum-bricks, in fact, make up the better part of our non-organic landscaping, front yard and back. I hate them.

We've been trying to get our regular landscaping guy to come out to talk about redoing the place for weeks. When he finally did make it down our way, the conversation led us to believe it was going to be too expensive in any case, but we're still waiting to hear back from him about a proposal and estimate. That was weeks ago.

And so we come to yesterday afternoon. There was a knock at the door and when I opened it there was a husky Islander on my porch (Samoan, maybe. Possibly Hawaiian. I dunno but he has a really cool tattoo on his arm...). Anyway, he introduced himself and said he owned a concrete and landscape company and was working around the corner from us. He'd noticed as he was driving by that we had these rough paving stones in the front and that we must have a baby because the stroller was on the porch. The paving stones would be really bad with the baby. Would we be interested in getting an estimate on replacing the stones with concrete?

Boy howdy, would I! I called Dave down, telling him, "Wow, our house looks so crappy that strangers are begging us to let them fix it!" And to some extent, that's true - the effect of these stupid bricks is very 1970's and not in a retro-kitchy-keen-neat-o way. Between them and our avocado green housepaint, our house looks sort of... fugly. (Never fear. Getting the house painted is very high priority on The List). He left us with a book of pictures of work his company had done and promised to return in the morning to talk further.

This morning he came back, took measurements and we tossed ideas around. He spent a while adding up square footage and... whatever else one does when making an estimate. Then he spent a few minutes explaining everything that the estimate would include. Removal of all the bricks - front and back. Pouring of concrete to replace the bricks in the front. Extension of the patio to about double it's current size. Redoing the lawn and sprinkler system. Adding a cement mow strip around the lawn. Etc, etc, etc. The more he said, the more astronomical I expected the cost to be.

And then he quoted a number so reasonable I almost passed out. Needless to say, he got the job. He's drawing up a contract at the moment and will be back with it this afternoon.

Timing is everything. I guess sometimes it pays to tell people their house is ugly. It's certainly going to pay off for him!

[Edited at 3 pm to add: Speaking of timing, he's got his guys in my backyard right now, demolishing the patio. When I said he works fast, I meant light speed.]
Posted by GoddessKristin on 04/08/08 at 12:34 PM [link]

Anyone have a dictionary?

This afternoon, my Mom and Dess were engaged in one of their favorite activities. Dess was standing up, supported by one of the couches and Mom was hovering nearby in case she fell (Dessa is not as good at the standing thing as she thinks she is. She is better at it than I actually want her to be, however. Also, she wants to stand all the time now).

So Dess was supporting herself on the couch, Mom was hovering, and Mom's silly Maltese dog, Sally, was perched on a pillow in front of Dess. Which freaking delighted the baby. It was a perfect opportunity and my Mom doesn't like to waste such opportunities.

"Dessa!" exclaimed Mom. "Who is that!? Who's that? Is that Sally?"

Dessa looked back and forth between the dog and Mom.

"Is that Sally?"

It might be Sally, Dessa's expression said.

"Say 'Sally'. 'Saaa-leeee'," Mom tried.

No response.

"Doggie. That's a doggie. Doooog-eeee"

Dessa looked at me with an expectant look, so I chimed in. "Dessa, that's a doooog-eeee."

Mom tried again. "Say 'doggie'. You can do it. 'Doggg-eeeeee'"

And with a sudden and sure expression of joy on her face, my brilliant genius child shrieked and said...

"FOOOOO-BAAAH!"

As soon as we figure out what language she speaks, we're gonna be in business.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 04/01/08 at 06:57 PM [link]