Walking tall

Hi! Guess where I spent all day yesterday? Hint: it was not in my classroom.

Before you freak and think I broke another limb, I assure you it was also not the Emergency Room. I almost sort of wish it was though (since they have the good drugs there), as I was in an all-day district wide leadership meeting and I am not even officially a Leader. I was a Leader. Before I broke my leg. Then I was relieved of duty. But the replacement Leader is retiring and really pushing for me to re-take the job. I am ambivalent about this for many reasons (most of which are named Dessa). Suffice it to say that I wasn't expecting to go to this meeting so I ran around like an insane person trying to put together lesson plans. And then sat in the meeting all day. You know how that goes.

Then I went racing over to Kaiser for an appointment with Dr. Useless and found out that the appointment was not until 4 pm (I thought it was at 3:30). Extremely annoying, because of a phone call I got from my Mom at 3 pm.

Brrrrrring! Brrrrrring! (imagine that this is the sound of my cell phone. Even though when my cell phone rings, it sings, "Yo, ho, yo, ho, a pirate's life for me")
Me: Hello?
Mom: Hello. It's me. Everything's fine (she always tell me this so I don't freak out). But guess what your daughter just did.
Me: What'd she do? (As an aside, I was really hoping it was not something I would have to clean up)
Mom: She just walked!
Me: Oh my God!
Mom: Yep. She took four steps toward her toys without any support.
Me: And I missed it!?

So you can see where my priorities are. But yeah. She's started walking now. She's been a demon with the cruising and the crawling, which she finally got the hang of, but now that's not enough. Now it's walking. What next? Marathons?

Video to come, but I need some free time to transfer and edit it so possibly over the weekend. It's odd. Last Memorial Day weekend I was hoping to go into labor. And now Dessa walks. What the hell happened?
Posted by GoddessKristin on 05/23/08 at 10:08 AM [link] [1 Comment - Go read it!]

Finally!

Just a quick veer off the usual topic around here - vainglorious obsession with myself and my life - to tip my hat to the California Supreme Court. Unless you've been living under a rock you've probably already heard that they voted 4-3 yesterday to lift the ban on same-sex marriage in my state. To that I can only say, "It's about goddamn time!"

I won't get into a rant about my views on allowing two people who love each other and wish deeply to make a public commitment to each other (and, let's be frank, receive the legal and financial benefits granted to one-man-one-woman marriages). But I guess you can probably divine my stance on the topic. This isn't about me, though, since it's not my personal issue - for me it's all theory.

Just let me tell you that yesterday morning, as I was walking to my classroom, one of my co-workers came flying towards me. This woman was my partner teacher when I interned and I've never known a better teacher. She is amazing. She's the kind of person who embodies what it means to be a teacher. She is committed, compassionate and involved with her students and her community. I have immense respect for her. She happens to be gay. She and her partner have two wonderful children who they are teaching to be kind, thoughtful, really great kids. And the wedding that these two woman had in San Francisco four years ago is finally - finally! - recognized by the state. She was bursting with joy.

Why shouldn't she be allowed that happiness? I'd be really interested to hear a good argument for taking that away from her. Because I don't think there is one.

(Tune in next week when we return to our regularly programmed schedule of baby updates, home improvement, and general self-centeredness on my part).
Posted by GoddessKristin on 05/16/08 at 09:13 AM [link] [1 Comment - Go read it!]

Rituals

Brat's blog entry from Friday put me in mind of my own patterns with Dessa. Brat writes about bedtime with her daughter, the earliest and easiest to ritualize of the daily routines - and the one with the best payoff, if done correctly.

But I'm thinking about our other patterns too, and wondering how many of them would really count as rituals. Dessa doesn't get a bath everyday yet, since she doesn't get that dirty and living in California I'm sensitive to wasting water. But when she does have a bath it follows a predictable pattern. Fill up the tub, add Mr. Bubbles as the water runs, put the baby in, give her the big boat toy she never plays with in any other circumstance (I like to maintain the mystery). I sit next to the tub on a small step stool and turn the bathroom radio to the classical station (before you call CPS on me, you should know it's one of those shower radios, made for bathrooms. Nobody's getting electrocuted on my watch). I pour warm water over her, wash her hair. Rinsing her off is fun, since she gasps like a fish when water runs over her face. The boat toy came with 3 small plastic cups which have varying holes in the bottom. Dessa loves for me to fill them up and let the water drain out in front of her so she can reach for the strings of liquid she can never quite hold onto. She chews on the plastic fishies, sinks the boat several times to the tune of Mommy relentlessly singing "Go Go Godzilla" and after I soap her up and rinse her off, she gets wrapped in her big girl bath towel and off we go to dress.

Meals follow a bit of a pattern too. I put Dess in her high chair, give her some finger foods, usually Cheerios, sometimes bits of chicken if we have some, or cut up fruit or veggies, occasionally the odd baked good like homemade banana bread. She stuffs the goodies in her mouth as I put together her meal. She loves to feed herself. When I pull the Cheerios box out of the cabinet she wriggles and shrieks with anticipation. She does her thing and then I do mine, spooning whatever's on today's menu mouthward. Then comes the dreaded washcloth, with which I rid my child of smeared... whatever it is... from chin, nose, cheeks, sticky hands and anyplace else untoward. This part she hates with a passion. It's as if I rinsed the washcloth with acid instead of warm water. Weird.

But it's bedtime that really is ritualized. Born a bit from necessity and embellished by me, it does seem to do the trick. Dessa's bedtime is 7 pm, occasionally a little earlier depending on how her naps went (in other words, how much of a pill she's being). By 7 o'clock, though, she's generally pretty tuckered out. Upstairs we go, after saying good night to Daddy, occasionally with a kiss, almost always with a wave of her hand.

Once upstairs, I close her door and we sit in the glider. These days she knows what's coming and, smiling, looks expectantly to our right, where her books are. She will only accept one - I know because I've tried to break the pattern and read others. Sometimes she'll allow me to read something different but then she insists upon "Elmo Loves You". I know the book by heart (which was good for a laugh the other day when I started to recite it to her. She looked shocked because she recognized the words but the book wasn't there). She happily turns the pages for me and at the end, when Elmo asks for a kiss, she obligingly gives the book a little peck. Then she wants to flip through the pages for a minute or two, which I let her do. Story finished, I set the book aside and we go to the window.

"Goodnight, shade. Stay closed until morning," I intone, turning to the wardrobe. "Goodnight, clothes. We'll pick something to wear tomorrow. Goodnight, books. We'll read you soon. Goodnight, stuffed animals. Watch over Dessa while she sleeps." Usually here I pause to pet the head of some random duckie or horsie, adding a deep-voiced, "We will!" Then it's "Goodnight, changing table. Time for bed now," because we're at the crib. I give Dess her blanket, and by this time she's rubbing her eyes obligingly. Down her head goes on my shoulder, she clutches the blanket, and I sing a slow soft "Twinkle, twinkle little star", the end of which generally acts as a signal for Dess to turn and start reaching for her crib. In she goes, with a few pats on the back and... I'm free to leave.

This ritual generally works like a charm. There are exceptional days, of course, when Dess is overtired, or not tired enough and she fusses more than usual. But right now it's fairly predicable and she seems to like it. I'd like to switch up the books from time to time but I can see the appeal of Elmo and someday she'll want something more advanced. Until then, I'm happy for these patterns, these things that ward off bad dreams in the night. I'm happy to be able to give them, down as I was for so many months, unable to put my baby to bed. I know these times for the fleeting things they are. Someday it'll be, "Could you leave the light on Mom? I want to finish this chapter" and she'll be providing her own entertainment.

Relentless reciting of "Elmo loves you" seems a small price to pay. After all, Elmo isn't the only one.




Posted by GoddessKristin on 05/12/08 at 07:30 PM [link] [No Comments - Be the first!]

Missed it by that much

Actual conversation that happened in my kitchen last evening, in which I heroically did not brain my husband:

Me: I have to remember to call my sister tomorrow and find out what she wants to do for Mom for Mother's Day.
Dave: Mmmmhmmmm
Me: I'm sort of surprised she hasn't called me yet. Mother's Day is this Sunday and it's Tuesday already.
Dave: Hmmmmm
Me: Though, actually, she may think we're already doing something...
Dave: What would we be doing?
Me: (Agape) Um... hello?
Dave: Oh that's right! You're a mother now!!

Sadly, he was not joking around.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 05/07/08 at 01:29 PM [link] [1 Comment - Go read it!]

Small Wonder

We're trying to teach Dessa to sing. It's not as odd as it sounds, since she has recently taken up repeating "EEEE-EYEEEE-EEEE-OOO" about a thousand times a day. It sounds suspiciously like the refrain to "Old MacDonald" and thus in response to her we break out in the nursery favorite to make her laugh. So far she's completely off key in her song stylings, but I assume that will change with time. Next stop, American Idol.

She's moving from repetitious "Dadada" to "Daddy" and "Nananana" to a clear "Nana" but very little by way of "Mama" these days. I suspect this has everything to do with the fact that I don't allow her to play with the remote control, an item she covets dearly. She's simply dying to walk and cruises around the furniture like a drunken monkey in quest of the remote. Meanie that I am, I set it on the chair arm furthest from her and she obligingly trudges toward it. Just as she's getting close... I move it to the other side. Gamely she edges toward it again. After a few back and forth trials, she'll often raise her round brown eyes to me and firmly announce, "Daddy" as though certain that her father will hand over the item in question because I clearly will not. When I reassure her that Daddy is upstairs but doesn't fancy her sucking on the remote any more than Mommy does, she thinks for a moment and says, "Nana", certain that my mother would grant her heart's desire if only she were present.

In this she is darling, but wrong.

Dess spends most of her time standing these days, eager to move. She stands unsupported for whole minutes at a time now, and reaches down for items on the floor if she's supported with one hand. It's hilarious to watch her figure out just how far she can reach and how much to spread her legs to support herself. Detective that she is, she knows she can't quite walk on her own yet (though she's a speed demon with the lion walker) so when she's stuck by the couch with a no-man's land between her and her toys, she reaches one hand out demandingly to whatever adult is closest and then drags us behind her as she makes a beeline to wherever she wants to go. There's nothing so entertaining to me as watching her get around these days. I love it, though the marked increase in her falling down puts my heart in my throat most of the time. I'd like to set her up with one of those padded sumo wrestler suits to protect her but alas, no. She has several little bruises on the backs of her legs and butt from falling, ker-splat!, right on an inconveniently discarded plastic farm animal.

She can finally get up to sitting position on her own now. Because she went right to standing and cruising, skipping the crawling stage, she didn't spend much time on her stomach - a position she's always hated except for sleeping. So she wasn't practicing moving from stomach to sitting. She'd just roll onto her back and flail like a turtle. A turtle with a flair for drama. But last week she started pushing herself up to sitting and now when I go in her room to get her in the mornings or after a nap, she's generally sitting up, babbling to her blanket.

And this weekend she started pulling herself up to standing. All this moving around tires her out but, as usual, she's so afraid of missing anything that she often fights her naps. I had put her down and left her room, but she was working up to a whopper of a fit so after about 10 minutes of increasing fussing, I went back into the nursery. And there she was, standing at the foot of her crib, wailing at the door, face red with frustration, real tears on her cheeks, a tiny prisoner in feetie pajamas.

It was almost enough to get her out of her nap. Almost.

It's so strange, how she sort of leveled out for a few weeks, just practicing her skills and then, bang - a bunch of milestones at once. It started when she made the connection to feed herself (broken off bits of popcorn did the trick and now she lurves feeding herself, often to the point of having a mouth absolutely stuffed with Cheerios). Then standing, cruising, pulling up to sitting and standing. Yesterday my mom said she was crawling but I haven't seen it for myself. It's all remarkable. She's becoming this real little person who's so fun to be around. Not that I didn't adore being with her as an infant. This is just such a fun stage. I wish, as I have wished with all stages, that she'd just stop for a while, remain this Dessa for just a little longer than I know she will.

Too fast, too fast.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 05/06/08 at 10:13 AM [link]