What Should I Have Done?

My parents came into town today and whisked Shay off to the park and then fed him lunch and put him down for his nap so that I could have a little time to myself to get stuff done (ah, grocery shopping ALONE, is there anything better?  I'm sure some people could think of some stuff, but today that sounded like the best imaginable thing...).  I used to go to prenatal yoga all the time during my first pregnancy, but I haven't managed to get to a class this time, so since I had a little bit of freedom, I decided to walk over to the yoga studio in the morning to go to a class.  It was lovely, and blissful, to have a little time to myself and some time to think about this new baby -- now that I am past the constant morning sickness, I'm not thinking about being pregnant all the time and so I find myself sometimes remembering "oh yeah, I'm pregnant!"... and then Shay climbs up on something precarious and I have to run to save him, or he asks for a snack and I have to go fix it, so the end of my "oh yeah, I'm pregnant" thought becomes just "well, I guess that's going fine and I'll just go over here and take care of this other thing." So anyway, it was nice to have an hour to just be pregnant, if that makes sense.

But the story that I actually wanted to tell is that as I was walking home, I noticed a disheveled looking man in layers of clothing and blankets standing by a storefront about a half a block away.  He looked homeless, which wouldn't in itself have been a surprising sight on the street where I was walking, but what caught my attention was that there were two kids, probably 5 and 7, or 6 and 8, and a dog, with him.  I passed by them, and then they started walking behind me.  The man was muttering and swearing at people passing by, and cars, and trees.  The littler child, a girl, was holding the dog's leash, and I gather that she lagged behind a bit, because I heard the man yell, "Keep up! Don't make me kick your f***ing a**."  The swearing, at the kids and at stuff on the street, continued for another block, and I exchanged a horrified glance with a teenage boy walking in front of me as he turned around to see what was going on.  I wanted to do something to help the kids, but I worried that anything I might say or do to try to intervene might just make life worse for them.  So, hating myself a little bit, I kept walking and they turned the corner off the street where I was walking.

Afterward, I wondered if I should have called child protective services or something? Or, how might I have intervened myself there on the street?  If you'd been where I was today, what would you have done?

Five New Words Today!

When I was in college, one of the best classes I took was an anthropology class on linguistics -- we studied the development of languages within cultures and also the development of language within children.  Both of those ideas fascinated me, and I loved writing the big paper -- we had to interview people about their observations of their child's language development.  My dad's cousin Lynn and I had some great conversations about her kids' first words and language development (and now her kids are both in college, which makes me feel very very old...)

So for a long time I have loved thinking about how and when children learn language, and how that corresponds with biology and culture and family culture, and how it is similar to and different from learning a second language later -- and of course one of my favorite things about being a mom myself now is getting to watch the day-by-day acquisition of language, first-hand.  At first, I marveled at Shay's ability to follow directions and understand our words, even before he could talk himself.  Then, I celebrated his first word, and kept track of each new word he could say.  Suddenly, now, I can't keep track... my aunt and uncle babysat Shay today and when I got home, they said he said the word "strawberry," which I've never heard him say -- and he said it for me, too, right after pointing out a "ladder" on a fire truck, talking to me about how he was pretend-"digging" the carpet with his "wo-wel" (shovel), and announcing that his frozen teething ring was "cold."  In an hour, I heard him say at least five new words that I've never heard him say before.  Sometimes, he acts delighted with himself when he says a new word -- I can tell he is excited to be able to communicate, and to be understood.  Other times, the words just come right out without him seeming to notice, which makes me think that he thinks he's been saying those words somewhere amidst the sounds that I hear as chattering and babbling -- and that that chattering contains a lot of words and ideas that I'm just not able to understand yet.

In some ways, watching him learn language makes me remember my first experience learning French, when I was 12.  We moved to France for six months, and although I knew a few phrases and words of French, when I attended my first days and weeks of the local middle school in our little town, I couldn't understand anything -- I couldn't feel the rhythms of the language yet, and I couldn't understand questions or directions without accompanying sign language.  For example, on one of the first days of school, a girl in my class (who remains a good friend to this day) said something to me as we were walking into a classroom -- it was a friendly tone, I could tell, but I couldn't understand the meaning.  She repeated herself several times, slowly.  I still had no idea what she was saying.  Finally, she repeated herself again, slowly, pointing at herself, and then a desk, and then at me, and then at the adjoining desk.  Relieved, I nodded, and sat next to her.  She tried her best to help me understand with hand gestures and slow repetitions -- and over the next few weeks as she spoke and the other people around me spoke, I slowly began to be able to hear the beginnings and ends of sentences, and to distinguish questions from statements.  Then, before understanding the meanings of words, I could hear the beginnings and endings of words.  Then, I could understand some of the words -- and then, suddenly, with a click, I could understand everything.

If that "click" of understanding happens with babies learning their first language in the same way that it did for me learning a second language, then I know that I have already watched it happen for Shay -- he has understood and followed complicated ideas and directions for a while now.  But I feel like I am watching a new explosion of language happen for him that I can't compare to my own experience learning French.  He is exploring his ability to imitate new sounds, to use words to make things happen and get what he wants, to get our attention and to make us laugh.  He seems to be learning communication, just as much as he is learning the particular language that we speak in this house.

I can't wait to talk to him tomorrow, and three weeks from now, and three months from now, and three years from now.  He seems to have some stuff to say.

Big Brother!

I took this photo about a week ago, before we cut off Shay's cute, scraggly, tangly, baby curls -- so now, he looks even more like a big boy.  He's got to start being the big boy in the house, now that he has a little brother or sister coming in January, just under a month after he turns two!

We're excited -- and I'm joining in the excitement more and more as I begin to feel less and less sick.  I wasn't sick for a single day when I was pregnant with Shay, so this all-day morning sickness, heaving every time I encounter a toothbrush, shampoo, or soap, feeling nauseous at the thought of a vegetable or something whole grain or something containing protein, or even just at the thought of entering the kitchen and preparing food, kind of caught me by surprise. Don't get me wrong: I still gained a few pounds in my first trimester, because plain white bagels with butter and plain white pasta with butter and ice cream still sounded just fine....  But I've been able to expand my repertoire of foods this week, which feels good, and the nausea is only in brief passing moments, instead of all the time -- which feels great, as I have to chase around an active toddler all day no matter how I feel!

But I'm sure that taking care of an active toddler and a brand-newborn, and dealing with all that sleep deprivation, will be just fine, right?  Right?

Language, and laziness

There is an explosion of new words around here. Lately: tea, bubbles, kid. As in: "I wanna watch that YouTube video of the kid and the bubbles and pretend to drink tea out of Mama's empty cup," which is what is happening as we speak.  So yes, this language and this desire stems out of me letting Shay sit on my lap at the computer and watch YouTube videos on one side of the screen while I try to look at e-mail or play my scrabble moves or update this blog on the other side of the screen.  I feel mildly guilty about this, like, I know I should be reading to him or taking him to the park or something -- but then, sometimes Mama needs to drink tea and read email for a sec. And, apparently, my lazy behavior is helping him learn new words, right? Right?

Okay, my short companion is shouting "Car!" now, so off I go to the other side of my computer screen to watch the "Cars" trailer for the eleventy millionth time.  Hope your summer is educational so far!

June so far: reading, and truck-watching

This morning, just after Patrick left the house, I noticed that Seamus was being very quiet, and I couldn't see him from the chair where I was sitting, which can sometimes be a bad omen.  But, luckily, nothing precarious was being climbed, nor anything important being shoved into the depths of the diaper bin.  Instead, he was sitting in his room by himself, surrounded by a pile of books, reading.

That's my boy! (By "reading," of course, I mean pointing at pictures of fire trucks.)

Now, he is back out in the living room, where he can see trucks and men doing work on the street.  About a month ago, some city workers came and dug a huge hole/trench on one side of our corner, exposing a big pipe/water main thing.  It took them days and days to dig it up, and every day they would put a big metal slab over their hole and seal the edges with concrete, and then come back in the morning, pry it off, and dig some more, then stand around surveying their work for a few hours, and then dig a little bit more.  Then, there was work done on the pipe thingamajig while the nearby fire hydrant sprayed a bunch of water all over the neighborhood, the hole was filled in and resurfaced, and the trucks drove away.  Then, two days later, they came back and started digging trenches up the hill and working on pipes up there, and finally got all that filled in a few days ago.  This morning, the jackhammers and diggers and dump trucks were back, and they're tearing up a different side of the corner.  It seems like poor planning to me; wouldn't it have been more efficient to all the jackhammering/digging at once, and then all the pipe repair work at once, and then all the resurfacing at once?  But it is like entertainment central for a toddler: week after week after week of real live trucks, right outside our apartment.  Shay keeps running from the front window to the side window, surveying the work.  He has two little steps he can stand up on to see out better, and sometimes he has one at each window, but then sometimes he picks one up and carries it to the other window, so that he can have two side-by-side for a while.  Variety is the spice of life, I guess.

Anyway, that is what is going on here.  That, and I'm staring at about 8 more portfolios of writing that I still need to read -- they are the only thing standing between me and summer vacation, so I know I should just power through them and get it done, but I am at the point where I feel like I can't possibly read any more student work until I've had a vacation.

The Zen of Fears

Seamus and I went exploring in the Japanese Tea Garden this morning -- I am into "things you can do for free with kids in San Francisco," and one thing is that if you get to the Tea Garden between 9-10am on a weekday, there's no entrance fee.  So, since we were over in that neck of the woods dropping Patrick off at the dentist anyway, we decided to go exploring.

We hiked over bridges, climbed up stairs, "jumped" from stepping stone to stepping stone, sat in dewy grass, smacked irises to make the glistening dew rain off them -- you know, your usual zen morning.  We also saw some big carp swimming lazily in the pond, and made fishy faces at them.

Seamus is usually nearly fearless, running off to explore new things, running up to new people to smile at them and see if they'll smile back at him, squealing as he runs up to dogs to say hi.  But lately, I've started to notice him having more fears -- this morning, for example, just 15 minutes after greeting a couple of dogs, he backed away in fear from a squirrel.  I don't know that he's ever seen a squirrel up close, so I guess that's part of it -- but I was surprised when I pointed out a squirrel running across the path toward a tree about 15 feet in front of us, carrying a nut in his mouth, thinking Shay would love to watch him run up the tree... and instead Shay sort of wimpered, turned around, and clung to me.  I tried to explain that he didn't need to be afraid of the squirrel, but he just wanted to wave bye-bye to it, which, in this context, means "let's get the heck outta here."  So we left the squirrel and walked up the hill, and then I crouched down to toddler level and pointed out a big statue of the Buddha, sitting cross-legged in the shadow of a tree near where we stood.  He barely looked at it before turning around to cling to me.  He refused to walk by the Buddha, and insisted on being carried past that area.

I guess it's good, for him to have fears of unknown creatures -- and that Buddha is a little scary-looking, I'll give him that.  It makes me feel safe that he runs to me when he sees something unexpected or feels unsure -- I mean, at least it makes me feel safer than knowing he will run fearlessly into anything.   He did, however, try to climb over a rock so he could get into the pond and make fishy faces up close to the carp, and I tried really hard to seem calm while I held him back.  We are both working on the zen of our fears.

5k!

Today, I ran my first 5k.  I succeeded in all three of my main goals:
1. I finished it.
2. I ran the whole way; no stopping/resting/walking.
3. I had the cutest cheering section at the race!

It was actually way more fun than I thought it would be! It was a great atmosphere -- very positive with lots of cheering for all accomplishments.  The event was for women and girls only, and there was the 5k I ran as well as a 10k, a half-marathon, an 18-mile race, and a 1.5 mile kids' run.  There was actually a good-sized group of young girls running the 5k as well, which I thought was really cool. The race was alongside a lake in a park in the East Bay, and it was nice to run outside, which I haven't gotten the chance to do in my training -- definitely makes the time pass by more quickly to have something pretty to look at! It was harder to keep track of my pace, though, without the treadmill to set the pace for me.  I have no idea what my time actually was -- I couldn't see the clock as I was finishing, but Patrick says I finished "fast" so hopefully I managed to keep a reasonable pace!  (Though I think Patrick's "fast" comment is more about being proud of me than about my actual speed...) I'm hoping they'll post it online so I have something to try to improve on next time -- because suddenly I've decided I like running more than I thought I did!

I loved having my little dude out there to watch me run my first race -- a great Mother's Day gift!

Good Old Days

This last weekend, we went down to PG for the "Good Old Days," one of the town's "major" festivals (i.e. two-block parade, local bands, two-block arts-and-crafts/food booth festival).  Seamus is obsessed with watching fire truck parades on YouTube, so he had fun going with his grandparents to watch a real-life parade with some fire trucks.  There were also members of the local high school marching band and dance troupe, local kids marching for the library, and old classic cars.  Oh, and belly dancers, the Senior Center tap class brigade, and the Castroville artichoke queen -- you know, your typical parade fare.  What's a parade without belly dancers on a float?

We stood across the street from the fire station to walk the parade, and Dude got a new junior firefighter sticker.  Here we are:

He then spent much of the next day and a half standing up on my parents' couch and looking out their front window onto their very quiet street, announcing "Fire truck!" Or playing with my dad in his studio, looking out the window into the backyard and pointing out "Fire truck!" Or, maybe he wasn't announcing or pointing out; maybe it was wishful thinking?  An attempt to summon?  Or maybe "Gah Guck" doesn't mean fire truck after all -- maybe it means outside? Red? Awesome? Music? I don't know; I'm a little confused.

But he had some good parade-watching time, hanging out in the studio time, playing on the porch time, going to the park time, and general lots-of-attention-from-grandma-and-grandpa time.

You could tell he had a great time, because when we drove home on Sunday afternoon, he looked like this:

When we got home, he ran delightedly through the apartment to the living room, and pointed right at his red fire truck: "Gah guck!" He then ran to the window, climbed up on his stepstool, and looked out at the crowded city streets.  "Ck! Ck!" he shouted.  I think it means truck.  But, you never know.

Losing Weight in My Hair

I used to be a swimmer (and would like to be again one day), and I have pretty much always hated running, but after I had Seamus I found it difficult to do much swimming, as driving through the city, parking, getting into the gym, getting changed, swimming, and then showering, getting dressed, and getting back home just felt like too much -- and it is pretty rare that I have that much time all in a row to myself, so I wasn't managing to do it all that often.  But, we have a little gym in our building that has some treadmills and elliptical machines and a bike and some weights.  So, after I quit the big gym with the pool, I started going downstairs to that little gym sometimes.  And then, since I was going to a gym that had no pool but that did have treadmills, I decided to try out that Couch-to-5k program, that is supposed to teach non-runners how to be runners.  I am now running 2.5 miles at a time, without stopping, so I guess it is working!  It kind of fools you into getting there, by making you run and then walk in intervals, and by gradually increasing the amount you run and decreasing the amount you walk.  It also makes you run three times a week, which keeps me more honest than just going to the gym "sometimes" -- but all the workouts are only 30 minutes, and I only have to run down the stairs to get to the gym.

I can't quite say that I love running like I love swimming, but I do feel quite virtuous after I run, and I love that feeling.  I thought, though, that this running three times a week would help me lose some weight, but it doesn't seem to be making much difference yet.  Maybe because it just makes me hungrier than I would be if I wasn't running?  

So, since I'm not losing weight in my body, I thought maybe I should lose some weight in my hair.

I felt like my hair had been long for a while, so I let my hairdresser cut quite a bit off the other day.  Shay didn't seem to notice any difference, but Patrick says I look like I got scalped.  I think that he is joking.  So anyway, I don't quite know how to gauge the new 'do, though I kinda like it.  My head feels lighter.

We'll see if my new lighter head helps make the running easier. After one more run at 2.5 miles, I have to do 2.75 for a week, and then 3.  I signed up for a real 5k in May, so wish me luck! I figure if I tell the internets that I'm doing it, it'll keep me from backing out.

Do you run?  Do you love it?  Can you help me learn how to love the part where I am actually running, instead of just the part after I run?  I am thinking that it might start with going to pick out some new shoes, right?

Happy Spring!

Happy Spring to you; happy anniversary to us!  When you look at the weather predictions in our area, it's rain-rain-rain-rain-rain, for as far into the future as predictions go, but right now, there's a little break in the rain and I can see some blue sky.  While part of me equates "spring" with warm sunshine, and flowers, and baseball, there is definitely a piece of me that loves this edge of springtime: the rain interspersed with the sunshine, wanting to drink hot chocolate while walking outdoors, etc.  I was thinking back on our wedding, which was also an edge of springtime day: there was grey fog hanging over the mossy trees surrounding the Unitarian Church where we had our ceremony for most of the day, but then there was a burst of sunshine while we said our vows.   Here we are at Lovers Point: we drove through a little sprinkling of rain but then as we got out of the car to take pictures, there was a break in the rain and a huge rainbow. 

I think my teeth were chattering a bit there.

Because my Aunt Judy and Uncle John are awesome, we get two anniversary dates this year: they came over last night and babysat while we went to the movies, and then they're coming back tonight so we can go out to dinner.  Awesomeness.  We saw Black Swan last night, and ohmygoddidyouseethat?  Talk about being on the edge.  I loved it -- I don't get to go to the movies that often, and it was definitely a fun movie to see in the theater: I got lost in the story, fascinated (creeped out?) by what was going on, gasping and grabbing onto Patrick and covering my eyes.  I don't tend to get that lost in movies on DVD, so that was fun.

Hope that this is the beginning of a lovely spring for you!

This Into That

While not desperately trying to get someone to read him a book about trucks, or looking out the window at trucks, Seamus spends a lot of his time putting things into other things.  He has a yellow wooden schoolbus with six differently-shaped blocks that fit into it, and he is starting to master getting the circle-shaped block into the circle-shaped hole, the triangle-shaped block into the triangle-shaped hole, etc.  He likes to stack up his stackable cups in the bathtub, and sometimes he likes to change it up and stick a rubber ducky into one of the cups.  He likes to load things up into the driver's seat of his toy dump truck, too, and he's getting more consistent at getting the alphabet pieces to fit correctly into his singing ABC's fridge magnet.  Or, sometimes he gets the magnets, blocks, and cups to fit correctly into the laundry hamper.

Or sometimes he finds new places to put the things that someone else has put in the laundry hamper -- this morning, for example, I was in the bathroom washing my face while he fished two dirty socks out of my laundry hamper and threw them into the bathtub.

And, as skinny as he is, he eats a ton and he LOVES to put food into his mouth.

I don't know if you can really tell, but this picture was meant to show you that he mostly puts food into his mouth with his left hand, with his right hand sort of dangling in the air nearby, until it swoops down on the tray at the end of the meal to help the left hand smoosh the food around. While he definitely uses both his hands to play and work with the blocks and magnets and do other things that use his fine motor skills, he seems to favor his left hand right now.  [I wonder if that means he is left-handed?  When does "handedness" (is that a word?) develop?]

The "putting things into other things" came in handy at our friends Cassie and Andy's housewarming party last weekend -- Shay spent a good 15 minutes taking beers out of six packs and stocking them in the ice bucket. (And then taking them out of the ice bucket and putting them in the six packs.  And then putting them back into the ice bucket.)

It has come in less handy as he has discovered how to put things into the top opening of the diaper bin and swing the handle down to deposit the thing into the smelly, gross depths of the bin -- we've lost a stuffed koala and a stuffed bear so far.

I, meanwhile, nearly poured coffee from the coffeepot into my oatmeal this morning, instead of pouring the water from the kettle.  And when I finished eating a yogurt while working on a lesson plan, I absentmindedly stuck the licked-clean spoon into the pen pocket of my schoolbag. What things are going into unexpected places in your house these days?

Do You Think I'm Talking to Hear Myself Talk?

About two years ago, there was a Facebook thing going around where you were supposed to write "25 Random Things" about yourself. It's one of the only Facebook notes I ever wrote, but I remember having lots of fun with it. One of my "things" on that list was: "I talk to myself a lot.  I'm actually never really talking to myself, precisely.  Sometimes I rehearse my part in conversations I'm eagerly anticipating or nervously awaiting.  Other times I find myself sort of explaining recent events to an unspecific reader/viewer/listener, like I'm my own first-person narrator.  I usually don't talk out loud, but I almost always move my lips.  And sometimes I get caught.  And getting caught, animatedly but silently talking to myself, is pretty embarrassing.  This is, in fact, the one thing on this list that I'm embarrassed to share." 

After I had Seamus, I found a new way to be less embarrassed about this talking to myself: I could say the stuff out loud, to him -- I could narrate what was going on, practice conversations with him, etc., and suddenly I wasn't having to do it silently, and no one would look askance at me, talking to my kid.  In fact, many of the books I read on parenting and language acquisition encouraged me to talk out loud to him, all day long -- they said that was how he'd get the rhythms and sounds and words and structure of language.

So, for over a year, I've been talking to Shay/myself, all the livelong day, just chattity chat chat.  I talk about what we're doing right now, what we're going to do later, what color things are, what the ducky says to the froggy while they're riding in the tugboat in the bathtub, what I'm thinking about, what I might say to my students tomorrow, what I would say to Scott Walker if I could get five minutes with him (expletives removed), etc. etc.  I have stopped feeling funny asking questions that get no response, or talking and talking and talking without leaving any pauses for response.

Then, the other day, I was trying to get Shay's dinner cooked and organized, and in an effort to get him out from underfoot so that I could move around the kitchen a little, and also partially just because I was thinking out loud about all the dinner things I'd need to have assembled before settling him into his high chair, I said, "Ooh, we need a sippy cup too. Hey, bud, where's your water? Do you see your green sippy cup?"  He let go of my leg immediately, and walked out to the edge of the living room and peered out at his sea of toys.  After 30 seconds of searching, he pointed frantically at a sippy cup nestled in amongst 14 books on trains, buses, and trucks. "Hey, yeah, you're right!" I responded.  "There it is!  Can you go get it and bring it to Mama?" He toddled off, grabbed the sippy cup, and brought it back to me.  "Thank you, Shay! What a good helper you are!" I exclaimed, and he grinned, proudly I think, dropped the cup, and hugged my leg.

This morning, we were in the car heading over to the freeway to head toward my school and his "day care" with Grandma and Grandpa, and we approached three yellow schoolbuses parked outside one of the local elementary schools.  "Look, Shay," I exclaimed, pointing at the buses.  "Buh! Buh! Buh!" he replied, clapping his hands.

I have an interlocutor, it seems.

Thoughts on the weather and attire

Two weeks ago, one of my students came in to class 20 minutes late, wearing fluffy ear muffs (it was in the 70s in CA then, making ear muffs an odd choice).  Since it was her 3rd late in a row, and since the rest of the students were doing some group work, I ushered her outside to have a conversation about arriving on time to class.  She kept the ear muffs on.  I kept wondering if she could hear me, while wearing ear muffs? -- obviously, she could, as she was actually apologetic and seemed genuinely willing to shape up, at least in terms of her timeliness.  But then I was still wondering if I should be asking her to take the ear muffs off, as "not wearing ear muffs" seems to me to be a more appropriate choice of attire when addressing an instructor, perhaps because they remind me of earphones, which students sometimes seem surprised to learn should not be worn in class.  But since she seemed to be listening to me, I didn't say anything, and she kept the ear muffs on, and then we went back into the room and she continued to keep the ear muffs on, all through class, actively participating and actively listening.  It is February, granted, but there are sure signs of global warming here in California and it was one of those hot, sticky days where the classroom feels stuffy and smells faintly of the sweat of a morning's worth of students.

Today, there is a buzz about snow -- people say it might snow in San Francisco for the first time since the 70s.  It feels cold enough.  Ear Muff Girl came to class in shorts today.

First Trip Sans-Baby

So, this past weekend, I went on my first trip away from the little dude since he was born 14 months ago.  The lead-up to the trip was sort of fraught for me: I was in the process of weaning him, and I thought he would probably be fine without nursing for three nights, but would he be for sure? I wasn't sure.  And would I be okay without hearing his giggle, and smelling his head, and kissing his cheeks, for three whole days?  I definitely wasn't sure.  I wondered if he would miss me, and if he would wonder where I'd gone, and if he would think I wasn't coming back.

I worried that I would worry the whole time, and not enjoy myself.

Turns out, I was wrong: it was awesome.  Heidi, Tina, and Sarah flew out to Natasha's near D.C. on Friday, and I followed them on Friday night, arriving early Saturday morning.  We spent Saturday in D.C., walking up and down the Mall to check out the monuments and memorials and buildings, going out to brunch, and visiting the Smithsonian; we also went back to D.C. on Monday before our evening flight back home to California, and visited another museum and the botanical garden, and checked out the Capitol building.  On Sunday we mainly lounged around in Virginia at Tash's house; Nate also took us on a tour of his base and we went out to dinner in a cute nearby town. I loved seeing D.C. -- I had never been there, and it was fun to get an in-person view of the sights that you read about and see on TV.  I may have pretended that I was on the West Wing, just for a little bit.  I also loved just being with my girlfriends, talking and laughing and eating.  I loved sleeping in and then lounging in the bed until I felt like getting up AND eating all my meals undisturbed AND doing whatever moved me without thinking about whether doing it would affect naptime AND having time to talk to friends AND read AND watch movies, all on the same day.  Even the plane ride home, with six hours to sit down undisturbed with a book, a magazine, and a selection of movies, with someone bringing me a beverage, was like being at a spa.

It was totally great.  I forgot to worry about whether Dude was wondering where I was.  And then, in the airport on Monday night, my homing signals started going off, and I was glad to be heading home.  When I got there, I sneaked into Dude's room to kiss the little curls above his ears.  When I heard him stir in the morning, I jumped out of bed and ran into his room to say hi, and when I came in he looked up at me with a vague smile and then looked right back down at the crib sheets he'd been examining, the new ones with the cars and trucks printed on them.  "Truck!" he exclaimed.

I don't think he missed me at all.

Gah Guck!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!  It is a quiet, rainy day in these parts.

We have another new word in our house: fire truck.  It sounds more like "gah guck" than "fire truck," but there is a definite association between the word and the thing.  Dude has a little toy fire truck as well as numerous books with pictures of fire trucks in them -- he will point all of them out and announce "gah guck!"; we also live in a city and so we hear numerous sirens go by our apartment every day -- and when he hears a siren, he'll point up to the window and shout "gah guck!"  He has a fire truck printed on the shirt he's wearing today, and he showed everyone in Trader Joe's: "gah guck!"

That's pretty much all that's going on around here.  Oh, except that I'm also trying to make a custard to go with this rhubarb tart that I bought at a nearby Irish bakery, because it's Valentine's Day and Patrick loves rhubarb and pretty much any dessert that I make or buy prompts him to say, "Hmm, this would be nice with a nice custard."  So I am trying, even though custard is sort of an unfamiliar concept to me.  I feel like with desserts where I would be accustomed to seeing ice cream or whipping cream served on the side, Patrick would be accustomed to seeing custard. Is that an American/Irish thing?  Or is my ice cream/whipping cream expectation a Western/California thing?  Anyway, the recipe said it should bake for 45-50 minutes or until it sets and a knife comes out clean, and it has been in the oven for over an hour and it's still not setting.  Is that normal?  Send help! Preferably help that arrives on a gah guck with its sirens blaring, as that would really please my short valentine.

Blankie

I give up: after trying to offer him numerous "lovies," blankets, and stuffed animals, Seamus's official security blanket is a sleep sack. He couldn't care less about satin or silky edging on the blankets that are advertised as "lovies" and that I tried to get him to buy into, but he finds zippers comforting, apparently.  He picks up the sleep sack and then twirls it around until he locates the zippered side, which he sucks and rubs against his cheek.  He carries it all around the house.  When I hand it to him, his eyes start to droop.  Here he is yesterday, ready to fall asleep yet mesmerized by the carwash.

Since he still wears a sleep sack at night, this is a convenient choice.  I'm getting the feeling, though, that even when he outgrows the sleep sack as part of his pajama situation, he'll still want to snuggle with the nice zippery sack.

Sweet February Sixth

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor, my dad's mother.  The name "Farmor" in Danish means "father's mother"--so a Danish person could have four grandparents with distinct names: a Farmor, a Farfar, a Mormor, and a Morfar, instead of two Grandmas and two Grandpas.  Unless they have a "Bedstefar" and "Bedstemor" in there--these are more generic "Grandma" and "Grandpa"-type names.  But I digress.

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor.  I can remember sitting on the couch in her TV room with her one day when she was very sick with lung cancer--she had to bring an oxygen tank around with her to help her breathe, and I wasn't quite sure if that was scary or just normal, for an old person.  I was eleven.  She put a little jewelry box on the table--the surface of that table was a big, colorful map, and I loved it--and out of the jewelry box she took a charm bracelet that was full to overflowing with little silver charms.  There are 28 links, and 29 charms.  She told me the story of each charm, stories that I wish I had written down, or that I could remember better.  There are three that I remember seeing for the first time, in amazement: a little pencil, which has lead--it doesn't write anymore, but you can see the nib of lead pushed down into the center.  A little harmonica, which doesn't play but which does have little teeny-tiny holes, so it looks as if it should play.  A little bicycle, with wheels that turn.

There are charms that signify her heritage and the places she cared about: there is a charm in the shape of the state of California and one of a San Francisco cable car, telling the story of her adult life in California, after she moved away from her little Danish-speaking village in Iowa to marry my grandfather.  There is an American flag, and a Danish flag, and a charm of the Little Mermaid statue that's in the Copenhagen harbor.

There are charms from trips: an Eiffel Tower, a pair of skis.

There is one charm that you can sort of tell doesn't "belong" with the aesthetics of the bracelet: it is larger than the others; it is the only one that is gold.  It's actually a neckace pendant, and it's a gold circle with a delicate edging and it is engraved "Sweet February 6th."  This one I do remember the story of: this was a necklace belonging to Annette, her daughter, my aunt, commemorating her sweet sixteen.  It lived with Annette from her sixteenth birthday on, and then came to live on the charm bracelet sometime after Annette died, which was when she was twenty-eight.

There are charms whose stories I think about re-inventing: a top hat, a cup, a canoe.  When did those come to the bracelet, and why?   For these stories, I would also have to invent for myself a version of my grandfather, a man I never met. If I invented him in writing, I would definitely use the story I've heard he used to tell: when he arrived in America on the boat from Denmark, he walked down the gangplank and saw a nugget of gold.  He kicked it off into the sea, because why bother picking it up?  He was going to California, and there was gold everywhere there.

I might also have to invent another man.

When Farmor died, she left me the charm bracelet, and some of her other jewelry.  I don't think I quite understood, at eleven, that she was telling me these stories because she wanted me to have the bracelet, because she wanted me to keep those memories--but, of course, that's what she was doing that day in the TV room: she was giving me some of her jewelry, and giving me a little view into her life.  Among the other pieces of jewelry she left me is a beautiful, delicate gold filigree bracelet made of arcs that suggest butterfly wings.  "This was given to me by the boyfriend I had before I met your grandfather," she whispered to me.

I have a charm bracelet that belonged to my Farmor.  I think I would like to write a story about it.

*I wrote most of this post in December, when I was first starting this blog, in response to a "blog writing prompt": describe a piece of jewelry you have and where it came from.  Then, instead of writing this and then saying I'd like to write a story about it, I thought I should ACTUALLY try to write a story about it, so I never posted this, but I had it saved in my draft posts. I did start trying to actually write a story about it, or at least to use that bracelet as a jumping-off point, but I'm not getting very far yet.  Maybe you'll hear more about that later.  But anyway, it started here, as a story about a piece of jewelry that came to me via my grandmother.  And though I thought of it originally as a story about Farmor, the bracelet is an object that, like a person, has complex entanglements with other people--and so of course it is sort of about Annette too. So, this is just sort of a snippet of an idea-in-progress, but I decided to "publish" this bloggy version today, on February 6th, Annette's birthday.  I can remember going with my dad to the beach on her birthday when I was a little girl, watching him write "Happy Birthday" in the sand, and watching the waves slowly lick at the letters.  He said that when the waves finally washed over the words, it was like then she knew we were wishing her a happy birthday.  Maybe, reader, when you read this, it is like you are washing over my words, and then she knows I'm wishing her a happy birthday.

Ckcklcklckx-aaahr

I'm not sure how you really decide what your child's first word is.  I mean, he's been saying "mamamamama" and "dadadadadada" for a long time now, but never really as a way to identify or get the attention of his parents -- they're just sounds.  He uses them in the same contexts as he uses "a-wawawawawawa" and blowing raspberries.

My dad is pretty sure that he says "--g" for dog -- like, he misses the "d" sound, but gets the end, 'ug-uh' sound, and uses it when he sees a dog.  I'm not quite sure, because when he's with me, he squeals with joy when he sees a dog, or sticks his tongue out and pants, but doesn't usually seem to be saying a word.

He loves doing "cheers!" with his sippy cup, and one day we clanked glasses, I said "cheers!" and he said "deeeee-ohhhh," and I thought, hey, that seems like a word! At least it sounded sorta right, and it made sense in context.

But then he never said it again.

But this weekend, he started doing a very insistent, concentration-filled "Ckcklckcklckx-aaahr" while pointing out the window at cars driving by, or when pointing at a fire truck in one of his books, or while pointing to a plastic dump truck in his toy box.  He seems to totally know what he is saying, and while it's not always precise, he gets the general idea that "things that have wheels and that go are cars."  He also does seem to be communicating: from his little perch by the window of our urban apartment, he will point his finger and look up at me with amazement and disbelief, like, can you believe our luck? Look, hurry, before you miss it!  There's a ckcklckcklckx-aaahr out there!!

So, I'm thinking I'll say that "car" is his first word, at 13 months.  The dog stuff came earlier, which maybe makes him sound smarter, but then again, I'm not sure that "my child's first word was to pant like a dog" really makes him sound all that smart.

Loss

I just learned yesterday that one of my friends, a member of my book group, passed away unexpectedly on Friday. So far there is no explanation -- she had been feeling sick for a couple of days, and then was found at her home, unresponsive. It is too soon, too fresh, to say anything remarkable about this.  But I felt the urge to write something down, to say that she had such a joyous laugh, and a beautiful smile.  She could get infectiously excited.  She had a fun, sometimes sarcastic, sense of humor.  She taught me new things about food, and books, and writing.

She had just moved a few months ago to Colorado, to be with a boyfriend she had met in the last year.  I could see from her pictures how happy they were together -- blissful, and domestic, with new Christmas stockings and a new dog.  She was a writer; she was working on a book.  Right at this moment I can't decide whether it is wonderful to die at a moment of happiness, contentment -- or whether it is awful to die right at a moment of happiness, contentment.  Both, I guess.  Both, of course it is both.

This should be all about her, this should be memories of her, I should not be thinking of myself and my own life but of course I am.  Of course the loss of a friend, a young friend, makes me think of my own vulnerability.  It makes me wonder whether I am living each day as I should.  It makes me think of my son, of being a mother -- because I am thinking of her mother, and I am crushed; my heart and lungs are completely and utterly crushed flat so that I gasp for a breath, when I think of losing a child.  And that makes me think of my grandmother, who lost her daughter, and my aunt, who lost her daughter.  And I think also of my husband's friend from college, another young friend, who died unexpectedly last year.  And I think of the two women I had known in high school who died in the last year and a half -- one from cancer, the other from complications following lymphoma treatments.  And I think, how can I know this many people my own age who are dying?  Am I at the age now, when people die?  Or have the stars misaligned?

And then I feel sorry for making this about me, about my experience, because even though I am experiencing the loss of my friend, this is about a young woman with a beautiful smile, an infectious excitement, a woman in the midst of making her own happiness, a woman who was a daughter, and a friend, and a lover.

I admired her for many things, but one of them was her bold, courageous decision to write a book.  So today, I am writing this raw little piece of writing and publishing it here without worrying what anyone thinks because "just write! just do it" is one of the things that my friendship with her taught (or re-taught, reminded) me.  And I hope that I will keep remembering to write, and to live every day to the fullest, because the world, though beautiful and wonderful, can be so deeply unfair.

Wherever you are, Erin, I wish you peace.

If I were president of the universe...

Here's what I wish people would stop doing:

1. On the highway, I wish people would stop coming up right behind me, so close that if I had to slam on my brakes to avoid something in front of me, they would come crashing right into the back of my car, where my child sits.  I especially wish that they would stop doing this when I am in the slow lane, or in one of the two slower lanes, when there is plenty of free highway space in the faster lanes.  Several times in the last week, I found myself moving over into a fast lane so that the impatient driver behind me could zoom past in the slow lane.  Dude, pull yourself together; if I am going the speed limit in the slow lane, and you want to go faster, pass me in the fast lane.
[As a related aside, I just wanted to add that before I had a child, I thought those "Baby on Board" signs were just cheesy and annoying little "Hey everyone: I've got a baby!" advertisements, sort of like those "My child is on the honor roll" stickers.  Now, I realize that they are a plea for sanity, saying something more like: "Dudes, WATCH IT.  I have a baby in here."]

2. I wish clothing manufacturers would stop making super low-cut jeans.  First of all, I don't like wearing them because of the muffin top situation, but second of all, and much more important, in my classrooms, the desk-and-chair combo seats that the students sit in have a little cut-out right in the lower-back area of the seat.  So, when all the girls wearing super low-cut jeans that reveal some "coin slot" (thanks for the term, Becky) sit down, they are in seats that frame the scene for all to see.  I often have my students doing collaborative work while sitting in small groups, which means that they often move their desks into little circles and clusters around the room.  It's like a sea of slot machines in there, people.

3. At the neighborhood park, there is this one woman -- I can't quite tell if she is a nanny or a grandma, but she is often there with a couple of little kids -- and I wish she would quit it with her nasal yelling.  She has this really nasal-y voice, and she sits on a bench in the sun, yelling at the kids she watches to play nice or be safe or come eat their snack in a minute, yell-gossiping with the other moms about people in the neighborhood, etc.  It's all sort of "performative talk," if that makes sense -- none of it is really necessary communication, but it loudly performs the fact that she is taking care of the kids, and that she knows everything in the neighborhood.  It is getting tiresome.

Thanks for listening.  What's bugging you lately?

In which I go into my room and cry forever

Y'all, it turns out my baby is now a toddler.

The evidence:

Instead of drooling on books, he picks a specific one out of the stack, pulls it out, brings it over to me, and thrusts it in my face so that I'll read it to him.  He arranges himself in my lap, turns the pages, and points to every wheel, dog, and sun or moon.

When we tell him "it's bathtime," he'll scurry into the bathroom, push his stack of cups and rubber turtle into the (as yet empty) bathtub, and try to start hoisting his little leg over the edge.

When I turn on Mozart or when he pushes the button on his musical refrigerator magnet that plays farm animal songs, he bounces and shakes his booty.

When I say "I'm gonna git you," he runs, giggling, to the other side of the room, and then turns and looks at me, waiting to get tickled.  When I put a toy truck on my head and pretend it's a hat, he cracks up.

He has curly blond hair covering his whole head.

Every day is more fun than yesterday, but where did my little baby go?

In which the family travels to places where the trees are taller than the buildings

A week or two ago, one of my friends posted a picture on Facebook of a beach full of sea glass, and I sort of got a bee in my bonnet that I needed to see it in person.  So this Saturday, we headed north toward the Mendocino coast, stopping along the way to show Shay the big redwoods at Hendy Woods.

There were exactly two other cars in the park when we were there, and so while we did say brief hellos to other hikers on the loop we walked, it was mainly silent, and mossy, and wet-smelling, and dark, with big shafts of light streaming at an angle through the trees.  It's funny: I teach on a campus that has forests of redwood trees, and I have certainly always supported the cause of saving old-growth trees, intellectually, but I think this is the first time that I really understood the majesty of that kind of forest, and understood why people will sit in those trees to save them.

Then, we went to see the sea glass.

It's on a beach in Fort Bragg, north of Mendocino; apparently, the beach was once the town dump and was filled with all kinds of junk, including lots of glass.  Dumping was eventually prohibited, and the waves have ground down the once-dumped glass into little rainbow pebbles.  It's a surprisingly beautiful moment of man-made destruction meeting nature.  Beautiful, that is, until you remember that you have a toddler whose main mode of discovery is to stick everything into his mouth.  

We stayed at a very clean-but-no-frills motel, the main selling point of which was that we had a kitchenette that was actually a separate room, so we could put the baby to bed at 7 and still watch a movie and read books.  Since you seem to want to know everything, we watched The Secret of Kells, a beautiful little animated movie that borrows from Celtic legend, which you should totally see if you haven't yet, and I worked on Last Call, a very long but interesting history of Prohibition.

This feels much more like a diary entry than I had intended it to be.  I wish I had a point -- I think my main point is that it was nice to be in quiet places and to see some different parts of the natural world than we see on a day-to-day basis.  I have some friends who live in the suburbs who tell me that they make a point to bring their children into the city so that they can experience the urban feel; I think I am starting to feel the draw in the other direction -- the need to bring my child away from the city.  Patrick and I kept remarking about how spread out the little towns up north felt.  We always want a little bit of what we don't have, I guess.  One day I will write a post about how I would give my left arm to live near a Trader Joe's where I could park without losing my mind.

Reading Material

Early this morning, I was sitting with Shay on the living room floor, playing a hybrid driving-trucks-reading-books game.  He was driving his dump truck around and then thrusting a book into my hands to read, and I was reading the books and then loading them into the scooper thing of the dump truck; you know, your usual lazy Sunday morning activity. Why, what were you doing at 6am?

We read his favorite counting book and his favorite shapes book, and a new book with a finger puppet puppy.  Then, I was trying to get him to choose this new, beautifully illustrated board book of A Child's Garden of Verses that I just picked out for him, but instead, he found a workout DVD that I got for Christmas, and handed it to me expectantly.  "It's not really a book," I explained, and tried to put it down, which reduced him to tears.  So, I read the front cover, popped it open and read a few words off the DVD itself, popped it closed, and read the back cover. Nineteen times.  Why, what were you doing at 6am?

Now, he is down for a nap, and I am sort of wondering if it was a hint, like, was my child really telling me that my butt looks fat, when he handed me that DVD?  Should I do that workout, while he naps?  But I am almost done with Patti Smith's new autobiography of her early days with Robert Mapplethorpe, and maybe I earned the chance to curl up on the couch with coffee and a book, after all the early morning truck driving and DVD reading?

Hope your Sunday is lovely and lazy.