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.