Turtle

min’t min’t

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:35:29 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Time is passing so fast. Katya and Vanya are growing in waves and bounds. It is quite amazing to be part of it.

At 16 months, Vanya has a driving determination to do everything his sister does regardless of the two year difference between them. Hence, he is climbing stairs by holding the hand rail and straightening one leg after the other. He is swinging on the big kid swings, climbing up ladders and sliding down any and every slide in the playground. He eats beautifully with a fork. He demands candy from the candy bag high up in the cupboard. He yells “mahhhmah, mahhhhmah” just like Katya. He likes to sit on big chairs and swing his legs. And now, he loves to brush his teeth (or tongue as it may be). If Katya get something he doesn’t or gets to do something he doesn’t, he forces his small little body into your face crying “me, me, me, me!”

Added to these things he is also developing a little repertoire of his own things. When it is time to go out, he often brings his shoes to someone to get help putting them on. When he is done with that, he brings the grown-ups their shoes so they can get ready. Today he brought his grandmother her sweater so she could get ready. When he has to go out of the room to get something (particularly at story reading time before bed) he holds up his pudgy little pointer finger, nods his head as if to say “you understand,” and says “min’t, min’t” (“be back in a minute”). Then he runs out of the room and back in again.

He is anxious to communicate with either signs or words and gets a thrill whenever anyone understands him. He routinely says “ta ga” (thank you) with a slow nod of his head if you give him something. A few days ago he asked me to change his shirt by doing the “change diaper” sign and tugging on his shirt. Tonight, he got me to push his chair in at the table by saying “puh me, mama, puh me.” Lately he has taken to muttering to himself “dubbahdubbahdubbahdubbah” over and over again and he gets a huge kick out of it if someone says it back to him. He has also developed the strange habit of liking to have his tongue cleaned. If he is eating something that he doesn’t quite finish swallowing, he’ll stick out his tongue until someone wipes it off with their finger.

Katya just started pre-school two days a week. The beginning was a little rough for all of us. Katya was fine the first day. Peter and I brought her to the classroom, stayed a few minutes and left. The second day, Katya cried and cried when I finally pulled myself out of the classroom. It was much harder to leave than I ever anticipated. The first several days that she was in school I involuntarily watched the clock wondering what they might be doing in school. Was it snack time? Was it roof time? Were they napping? When I would go pick her up or hear from my parents that all was well, all the anxiety and energy would drain from me and I would be left mostly useless for the rest of the day. It was hard. We didn’t know exactly what to do or what to say to Katya about why we were sending her to this place that was making her cry. I didn’t fully realize how difficult of a transition it was for Katya until her teacher commented on the fifth day she went to school, “today was the first time Katya ran around on the roof during play time, laughed and had a good time.” Oh, that was heart wrenching. But, after that things got better pretty fast. Now, instead of saying “Mama, I don’t want to go to school” every morning, Katya asks in the afternoons if she can go to school the next day. What a relief!

Peter and I are doing well, if a little tired. Peter has been preparing for a photo exhibit in Wels, Austria in a few weeks. Once that is over, he’ll attend another festival in Austria in December to take photos and then turn his attention to preparing for an exhibit in Oslo, Norway in January. I’ve been working on developing our training curriculum at OPTIONS and planning a whole string of grant-funded trainings around financial aid for college and working with immigrant students on the college process. Not a quiet moment most days.

aah dah!

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:30:18 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Vanya is growing so fast, I thought I’d share a little about him.

April 30, 2009

Oh how time flies. Just a minute ago Vanya was tiny sweaty sticky baby searching for milk on everyone’s breast, arms and shoulders. Now he eats everything, talks and almost walks.

This week Vanya had chicken and rice, pasta and yogurt, slices of cheese and avocado. He routinely says “aaah dah,” (all done) when he is finished with his meal or even his “ga caca” (Graham Cracker). He tells us when he wants “duh!” (down) and is working on remembering “uh” (up). He knows “mama” and “papa” and has privately been practicing “baba,” (Katya’s name for her grandfather). “Katya” and “Mya Mya” (Katya’s name for her grandmother) cannot be far behind. Vanya shakes his head and says “ne ne ne” as he pulls the trash can over, plays with the electrical cords, and puts rocks in his mouth. He climbed two flights of stairs today with little assistance to get from his grandparents to his house for a nap. He pushes Katya around in a little red wagon and wrestles with her on the grass, the floor and mamapapa’s bed. He is always into something and requires constant care. Even Katya helps watch that he doesn’t eat anything he shouldn’t (dog food is his number 1 goal) or play with anything too small.

All this at ten months. What will he be up to when he is eleven months?!?

May 6, 2009

One week later and Vanya is saying “Kaka,” exactly what Katya called herself for the first two years of her life.

Today, I heard from a little bird that Vanya found one of Katya’s bubble blowing bottles, the non-spill kind in the little bottle with the bubble wand sticking out. He picked it up, pulled out the wand, and (I know what you are thinking, and he DIDN’T stick the wand in his mouth) he held it up to his mouth and went “whooo whooo.” He tried to blow bubbles!

I woke this morning at 5:40 am to do zazen (sitting zen) as I have been doing for the past couple of months. Recently, I have many times woken at 5:40 am only to find out that Vanya is also awake, making it somewhat impossible to sit zazen. So I have been trying different strategies to enable me to sneak down the stairs without waking anyone up. My very first effort was clever but a little too effective. I ordered a vibrating alarm wrist watch thinking it wouldn’t wake anyone else up. And it worked. No one woke up… including me. Then I tried closing the door to Katya and Vanya’s room when I got up to go downstairs. That ended yesterday in a storm of grunting and yelling. Vanya woke up and started grunting which woke up Katya who saw that the door was closed and started screaming “Why is the door closed? Why is the door closed?” So this morning, I woke up, sat up, turned off the alarm. I sat very quietly for some minutes hoping that everyone was sinking back into deep sleep. I stood up. I heard rustling from Vanya’s crib. I dropped silently to the floor in a split second decision to sit zazen right on the floor beside my bed so as not to make any noise at all. Silence. One minute. Rustle. Rustle. Two minutes. Ruuuustle. Silence. A small voice, “Aaa Dah. Ahhhhh Dahhhh.” Pause. “Mama.” Pause “Ahhhh Dahhh.”  No way to feel irritation. Just joy, amazement, bewilderment. Who is this small boy?

two reasons to celebrate

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:44:24 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

We have two big reasons to celebrate in our household:

Reason 1: KATYA IS POTTY-TRAINED!

Three weeks ago, we threw Katya a Potty Party. A Potty Party is an intense event. It involves teaching your child how to teach a doll how to use the potty, purchasing a doll that “pees,” explaining to your child why water is leaking out of the dolls armpits and hip joints, identifying a proper substance that looks like doll poop but doesn’t tempt you to eat it, and much much more. The purpose of a potty party is to make your child so excited about learning to use the potty that he/she will offer no resistance and be carried away on a wave of big kid peeing euphoria.

Our potty party turned out to be successful, but it didn’t live up to all that. A couple illustrations will suffice to demonstrate on what a lower level our potty party registered on the excitement scale (even though I tried my hardest to be the enthusiastic parent):

•After going with her doll to the bathroom to pee three or four times, Katya completely lost interest. I said “OH, EMMA (our doll’s name) NEEDS TO PEEEEE, KATYA.” You can imagine my voice twittering with excitement and anticipation. Katya said, “Oh?” “LET’S GO WITH HER TO THE BATHROOM” (at which point you are instructed to grab your child’s hand and rush off to the bathroom). I grabbed Katya’s hand attached to her totally sedentary body, and she looked up and said “No, mom, you go.” “You don’t want to go?” I say trying to sound unbelieving and still excited (instead of disappointed – not that she had also lost interest in this game but that she would not see and appreciate what a great poop I made out of prunes this time). “No, you go. I’m busy.”

•At the crucial point a little later, the point where Katya opened her gift of “big kid underpants,” and was supposed to jump for joy and beg to put them on, she looked calmly up at me and said “But where is my other present?” I was confused. “What other present?” She said “Another present. I don’t want this one.” PAUSE “Oh, but these are really exciting. They are your new big girl underpants, just like Emma’s. Let’s try them on.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” she wailed as she fled from me. For a moment it seemed as if this whole crazy farce was all for nothing. A deep breath. A reach down to center. I walked after her, clear that there was nothing else to do but quietly persist in my objective, which was to get her to put on some big girl underpants. As I put a pair of underpants on her, she wailed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOOooooooo, NO, noooooo, nooo….” But as soon as they were on, she stopped, jumped off the couch and said “Let’s play babies.” And that was all there was to it.

•That afternoon, after she had used the potty successfully three times (another part of the potty party is inventing ways to get your child to drink 12 gallons of liquid) and been greatly celebrated with stickers, treats, hugs and kisses, she had to go again. As she sat down on the potty, she looked up and said with a slightly bored tone “I want no stickers, no treats, no hugs and no kisses, Mama.” And she proceeded to pee in the potty, get up, wash her hands and leave the bathroom.

Reason 2: VANYA CAN CRAWL!

Yes, you read it right. Vanya can finally crawl. He is very pleased with himself. His relations are less pleased… those relations, that is, who like to keep their electrical cords in one piece, their garbage in their garbage cans, their laundry in their laundry bags, the cat food in the cat food dish, and their legs without bite marks.

Oh, yes, did I mention, he also learned to chew (bite) on people? And, did I mention, it HURTS!!? He has four sharp !#%!!# teeth.

Unfortunately, the only thing funnier (to Vanya) than tipping over the garbage can is the word “no!” My parents insist that he even knows how to say this word and that when they say “NO!” he laughs and turns around and says “no” right back.

He is communicating up a storm. The second sign he picked up (after “milk”) was “all done.” He uses it constantly – whether to tell you he is all done with the apples or all done with the meal in general. If you try to ignore it, he gets really upset, arches his back and screams. In addition to this, he has just learned that he can pull his bib off. Even when it seems to be hurting him, he pulls, pulls, pulls, scrunches up his face and throws his head back, and POP! off it comes.

His nickname is trouble (double double toil and).

If you are interested in seeing the two sweet munchkins in action, you can look at these two videos they made to wish their grandmother a happy birthday:
Katya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzKSLeVnFs
Vanya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCEuC4lEe0

on the children of mr. and mrs. pickle-sausig head

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:29:51 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Sometimes Peter and I like to call Katya “pumpkin head” as an endearment. “Hello my little pumpkin head!” “It’s time to go to BED, pumpkin HEAD.” I am not sure why we started or where it came from, but the other night we were unwise enough as to have a prolonged conversation about it:

“Are you a pumpkin head?”
“Nooooo”
“Who is my little pumpkin head?”
No answer.
“Who is my little pumpkin head? Who is?” [Tickle Tickle]
“HAA HAA HAA HEE HEE HA”
“Are you my little pumpkin head?” [Tickle tickle tickle]
“HAA HAAA HEEE” [gasp for breath] “HAA HEE HAA YES HAA HE HE”
“Is mama a pumpkin head?”
“No.”
“Who is mama then?”
“Mama is a pickle head.”
“:( … is papa a pumpkin head?”
“No. Papa is a sausig head.” [sausig = sausage]

It is somewhat berserk having two little children. There are whole hours where not even an instant of quiet breaks through the noise. Katya has taken to talking non-stop and asking “why?” about every 20 seconds or so (this is particularly true when you are engaged in some kind of hard physical or mental labor). Vanya, having passed through his screeching at the top of his lungs phase, had entered the eternal noise and babbling stage. He just puts out a constant string of sounds, which occasionally are very cute “da da da’s” and more often are less amusing (i.e. extremely irritating) moans and groans.

Katya’s nose runs often in the winter time. We are not sure if it is the wintertime snuffles or allergies. But she often asks for a tissue. Just now, as I was writing this, she asked for a tissue. I took the opportunity to use the toilet and get her a piece of toilet paper for a tissue. As I handed it to her she asked,
“It that you pee one?” “WHAT?” “Is that you pee one?” “NO.”

Katya has become very directive of late. She has always known quite clearly what she wanted, but now she is able to articulate it. And, she does, non-stop.
•Upstairs: “Mama, I want seltzer with ice in a sippy cup, please.”
•On the way up the stairs: “Carry me, mama. Turn on the light. When we get upstairs, I want to play play dough in my playroom for a couple minutes. You turn on my light.”
•On the way down the stairs: “I want toast with black berry jam and a bowl of yogurt with honey and Mama’s cereal.”
•At the breakfast table, sitting backwards in her chair observing my mother, who makes us all breakfast: “I want a waffle, Mya Mya. I want a waffle, Mya Mya. Mya Mya I want a waffle. I want a waffle with syrup and egg and toast, Mya Mya. I want some water. Mya Mya I want some water… NO, not in that cup, in a sippy cup. I want some juice, Mama, I want some berry juice in a regular cup… NO, that doesn’t match, that doesn’t MATCH…”

Matching is a big thing. We mistakenly bought her a multicolor set of plates, spoons, forks, bowls and cups. Now it is one of the essentials of each meal that Katya’s food is all served on the same color table ware – so if you choose a blue plate, you must also be able to find the blue cup, the blue bowl, the blue fork and the blue spoon.

She has also been building lots of skills. She can do 12 piece puzzles all by herself. She is learning to play concentration with bear cards. She loves to help wash vegetables, make jello, pour pasta into water to cook and do art projects. She paints, glues, and scatters sequins and colorful cotton balls all over the place. She still loves to build towers with blocks or legos, play with her little wood and plastic people and her “babies.” She loves to migrate various items throughout the house. For example, this morning she had to take a plastic cabbage, apple slice and piece of corn down to her grandparent’s apartment.

Vanya is doing well. He is pretty big now, being seven months old and almost 20 pounds. He has recently learned to do lots o things, which put me in mind of writing his chronology before I completely forget when things happened for him:

Contractions started: Jun 10, 3 pm
Bought coconut water at store for consumption during labor in the hospital: Jun 10, 4 pm
Labor started in earnest: Jun 11, 2 am
Called doula to come: Jun 11, 4:30 am
Doula arrived: Jun 11, 5:30 am
Labor progressed with unusual speed: Jun 11, 7 am
Started feeling urge to push: Jun 11, 7:15 am
Fled to the hospital: Jun 11, 7:30 am
Arrived at hospital: Jun 11, 8 am
Born: Jun 11, 8:18 am
Longingly remembered the coconut water we abandoned as we fled to the hospital: Jun 11, 9 am, 9:30 am, 10 am, 10:30 am, 11 am….
Came home: Jun 14, 1 pm
Started breast feeding: Jun 15, 7 am
Started solid foods: Oct 11
Rolled over: Sometime in October or November
First tooth: bottom front, Nov 15
Second tooth: other bottom front, Nov 29
Sat up without help: early Dec
Stopped breast feeding: mid-Dec
Started sleeping through the night: Dec 24
Moved into a room with his sister: Dec 27
Did his first sign: Jan 1 (sign for milk)
Started babbling: early-Jan (a da da da da, a ma ma ma, a pa pa pa )
Started pulling himself to stand on his knees in his crib: early Jan
Started clapping: early Jan
Held his own bottle: mid-Jan
Shouted with anger when he was barred from entering his sister’s play space in his walker: Last week
Started finger foods: today
Third tooth: any day now
Started crawling: sometime soon or he will bust a gut
Mom completed healed from ballistic birth: before this calendar year is over?

Vanya’s defining characteristic is his calm bright cheerfulness. He can sit for ages quietly engaged in playing or contemplating life but when someone looks at him or talks to him, he positively lights up.

It has begun to become clear that Vanya is developing strong will power and sense of determination where his interests are concerned. He is not easily dissuaded from completing the tasks which he sets for himself. Downstairs at my parent’s house, they have had to rearrange the kids’ play space because of Vanya’s escapades in his walker. At first, he wasn’t really good at maneuvering around in it. But he slowly got better and better. Then he began to conduct a series of drive by’s of Katya’s table, often abducting little plastic people standing too close to the edge– and the only thing louder than Katya’s shriek of dismay is Vanya’s howl of rage at being barred from the area.

Unlike his sister at his age, Vanya likes to try to eat books, or at least chew them, and he loves to grab them and feel them. He is crazy to crawl. He tries and tries and tries – and falls, falls, falls…. and tries again and again and again. He can move around a very wide area just kind of scooting and half-crawling. He can also pick up tiny things off the floor – so we have to sweep all the time. He loves music. As soon as someone starts singing or playing music, Vanya invariably starts bobbing up and down and smiling and sometimes clapping. He definitely claps if the song is “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

growing lots of teeth

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:53:41 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Two sweet sleeping babies lay upstairs. One tired gum-chewing tea-drinking mama sits downstairs in front of her computer zoning out.

Today was quite a day. Katya is getting her two-year molars. (She let me look in her mouth with a flash light!) She is crazily vacillating between playing cheerfully and whining intolerably. She even had about 30 minutes when she was just crying inconsolably. She asks for all kinds of snacks, but doesn’t eat them. She wants to sit up at the table for lunch and dinner but only to play with her food. She is contrary and has tried everyone’s patience by dripping cereal on the table and floor, mixing up Myamya’s embroidery threads, throwing toys on the floor, sticking leaves in her mouth, crying over everything, constantly demanding “new” water or juice or snack, and then sinking back into Myamya’s chair pale and tired saying “I don’t feel well, mama. Pick me up!.”

We took a walk to the park this morning. When we got there, she wanted to walk. So we helped her out of the stroller. She hadn’t gone five steps when her (new) pants started falling down. In the summer time when that happened, we just took off her pants. But today it was cold. So, we stood there racking our brains for something to use as a belt. I scavenged around through the diaper bad while Katya was standing there crying like she had lost her best friend. The only thing I could find was a plastic bag. So I tore it down the middle and wadded it up and bent down to loop it through the belt straps on Katya’s pants. She started shrieking “NO! I don’t want the bag. I don’t want the bag.” and crying hysterically. It took us more than 5 minutes and every ploy we could think of to get her to calm down and accept the bag as a belt for the time being. I think the winning ploy was that she could hold the bag of popcorn that we were taking to feed the ducks.

Needless to say, I am quite tired tonight.

Peter is in Austria. He has been there for 6 days and I miss him terribly - not just because of the relentlessness of being with two kids all day long. He is my relaxation. When he’s home, we relax in the evening together - whether we go see a concert (extraordinarily rare these days) or watch House, MD (very common) or just talk for a while and then go to bed early. He is my relaxation even when it stresses me out to be doing nothing instead of something. He will be home tomorrow.

Vanya is teething too. But his teething is regular “wah wah mrhhmmmm mrhhmmm mmmrahhrahh rah mrrr mrrr rahhhh” constantly all day long type of teething. You know, the Dab of Orajel, Drool Profusely, Fall Right Asleep kind of teething.

Otherwise, he is an extremely cheerful little guy. He loves to put stuff in his mouth: his toys, his hands, your hands, his clothes, his burp clothes, Katya’s toys, your toys, diapers, wipe-ees, papers, pencils, tubes of Desitin, plates, whatever he can get his pudgy little hands on. He also loves to keep rhythm. He has a little rocking chair and he knows just how to move his legs to keep it rocking for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. He can rock himself across the room. He is just learning the same thing with his new johnny jump up. He is beginning to bounce in rhythm, up and down, up and down, up and down, no higher, no lower, no higher, no lower, up and down, up and down. He is eating solids already. He eats cereal happily, squash less happily and pumpkin somewhere in the middle.

AND, he is learning to sleep through the night. He sleeps about 10 hours a night now, which is great! In fact, I am going from this e-mail to the shower and then to bed with the possibility of sleeping for seven hours straight. (I haven’t realized this possibility yet because Katya started to wake up at night just about the time that Vanya started sleeping through them, I think because of her teeth. But, even if I don’t realize it, going to bed with the potential for sleeping 7 hours straight is much better than going to bed without that potential).

Part 2: Vanya

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:20:22 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Vanya is 2 1/2 months old. He is harder to write about than Katya. He is a sweet, good natured, patient baby. He doesn’t cry unless he is hungry or he wants to be burped - and even then he only cries if you ignore the vast number of squiggly grunting signs he gives that something is wrong. He hasn’t cried at night for at least 2 months now, which is just amazing.

Since he is so quiet, sometimes you almost forget he is there, sitting in his chair or laying in his bassinet. That doesn’t mean that occasionally he doesn’t demand a lot of attention. He does. There are days he seems to be hungry all the time or simply uncomfortable. And, he does like to be held and talked to. He completely lights up if someone bends down to pay attention to him. He smiles and laughs and coos.

He has developed a mesmerizing cooing repertoire. Accompanied, as it is, with laughing and smiling, he pulls you in so that it is almost impossible to turn away. He uses a great variety of sounds and tones, including some impossibly high ones. And he bats his eyes at you as if you were his whole dependence and delight.

For the last two nights he has been working at twisting me around his little finger by sleeping for 7 and 8 hours at a time. I am completely charmed. Although I have to relearn how to sleep for that many hours in a row. He sleeps soundly through. It is I who keeps waking up… to check on him, on how many hours he has been sleeping, on when I might need to pump, on whether I have to go to the bathroom, on how many hours might be left…

He is very healthy and growing right on schedule. At his 2-month visit, he was in the 50th percentile across the board for height, weight and head circumference. He now weighs more that 12 1/2 pounds. It still absolutely amazes me, as one of Vanya’s older cousins highlighted for me by continuously asking to see the milk, that though you never actually see the milk going from your breast into the baby, that the breast feeding thing really works.

Part 1:Katya

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:17:51 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

HELLO!! I hope everything is good with you. It has been so long since I wrote an update that I have decided to split the main news into two e-mails - one about Katya and the other about new baby Vanya. I’ll try to write a more general one soon.

Katya is now 2 years and 4 months. She is talking up a storm these days, saying impossibly cute things like:

“Mama, pick you up.” (Mama, pick me up)

“Mama, pick you up Vanya.” (Mamy, pick Vanya up)

“Papa, I want water mama.” (The “mama” at the end of the sentence being a generic word she sometimes puts at the end of requests regardless of who she is addressing.)

“Hold you.” (Hold me)

“I wanna be like a baby” (This she says before sitting in Vanya’s chair.)

“Need more money. Money melted.” (This she said when riding on one of those little rides they have on the street outside of stores which require an endless stream of quarters.)

“Ha ha! Munny joke!” (Funny joke)

“One, two, blee, bore, bive”

“I have a little ploblem.”

“Not like dis. Not like dis!” ending on a rising note of panic. She says this when you are trying to help her rearrange something, dress her doll, build something with blocks, put food on her plate, sit in a chair in the kitchen… or any other time when her idea of the necessary position of any item does not correspond to your intention or action.

And once, after I farted when putting her to bed, “Mama pooped. Needs new diaper.”

Two very recent language developments include using the word “our,” as in our house, our car, our stroller, and the word “on,” as a universal preposition. For example, “I want to play on the baby on the room.”

Just listening to her talk when she gets in her groove is mind boggling. The other day I jotted down some of her dialogs with herself and with me. Here’s an example:

She was playing with two pails. She has just told me that one of them is her coffee and the other is my coffee. “That a lot. A lot of holes. Dat Mommy’s. Mommy’s coffee pouring out. My coffee gone. My coffee gone. Not dat coffee. It’s drippin out. I wanna see anoder cup.” A little later she came up to me and said, “My belly dirty.” I asked “Your belly is dirty?” She replied, “Dis water, not tea. Berry juice,” showing me a doll’s cup full of water. “I want that cup.. water on the belly. I did it. Not anymore. I want to drink dat water.” Then, looking up, she continued with hardly a breath, “Belka. Belka. Belka.” And then looking at me, “Call belka.” (meaning I am calling a belka). (Belka is the russian word for squirrel)

Just today at lunch, Katya was full of crazy things. The first thing she wanted was a pear. So I gave her one, a really good one that Peter had just picked up at a farmers market. A few minutes later I looked over and saw one whole finger of hers had disappeared into the pear. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Making holes,” she said, removing her finger and sticking it into another part of the pear, as she had clearly done several times previously. “Stop doing that. You’re making the pear disgusting,” I said. She looked at me, looked at the mutilated pear, and then held it out to me and said “Mama eat pear.”

Later she wanted a sandwich with mayonnaise, ham and cheese. So made her one. A minute later I looked over and saw that she had put the sandwich near my plate with one bite out of it and a chewed up piece of sandwich sitting neatly on top. “You don’t want your sandwich?” I asked. “I don’t like it,” she answered. A little later she said “I want bread.” Thinking I had found a very clever way of getting her to eat her sandwich I said, “Why don’t you have some of your sandwich?” She looked at me, then considered the sandwich for a moment. Finally she nodded and said “Take off cheese, take off ham, take off….” I interrupted, “OK. OK. Here’s a piece of bread.” I gave her a fresh piece of bread and finished eating her sandwich myself.

full steam ahead

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:03:11 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

I just read through my last update which I wrote in December. The last line was “I hope to be in touch more often now that the worst (first trimester) is past.” Quite funny as I have rarely written so infrequently

We are all doing well. I am 8 months pregnant, a balloon already and getting bigger by the day. Katya just turned 2 on Saturday. She is doing really great - learning and growing all the time. She is just beginning to speak in sentences. She says things like

- “No eat grass
- “No myamya baba. New toys. Mama by.” (I don’t want to go downstairs for breakfast. I want to play with my new toys with Mama sitting next to me.)
- “KaKa poop. Need new diaper
- “No dirt. Play on grass
- “No Papa push” (when Peter tries to get her to walk a little faster)

She can walk about 1/2 mile or so without getting tired. She loves to play in the playground now - swinging, playing in the sandbox climbing and sliding. She loves to play with her little village people, her babies, play dough, water, and almost anything else she can get her hands on. She still loves to swim and take baths.

Peter is doing well. He has been sorting out and posting all his photos on-line in preparation for the rush of new baby photos.

beung

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:49:19 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

So first, I will tell you about Katya… (surprise!)

We are so excited that Katya will be multi-lingual. She is learning English, Russian, and seems to have retained a smattering of words from her previous habitation on a planet nearby Mars. Hence, we are all becoming multilingual. There is not one person in our household (no, nor cat or dog either) who cannot translate the following sentence correctly:

I saw a La La La sitting in beung eating badum badum.

The answer is clearly:

I saw a pig sitting in water eating pasta.

Of course, Katya is not forming sentences yet, but she is clearly naming things. How she gets these names, we are not always sure. The La La La we can explain. It comes from a Boyton book which begins: “ A cow says ‘Moo.’ A sheep says ‘Bah.’ Three singing pigs say ‘La La La.’” The other words we have decided she remembers from her stay on “her” planet.

(Interestingly, while “water” is “beung” in English, it is very correctly “voda” in Russian.)

Other words more closely resemble English or Russian. When she wants out of the stroller, she points to the ground and says “wahkh.” When it is time to go to bed, she says “poka poka” to papa and “bye” to mama. She can say both “belly button” and “pupok” (Russian for belly button) and knows where it is. When she wants to go from the first to the second floor, she says “Up Up.” When she wants to hear her favorite CD (which is every 5 minutes) she says “A B” for the first two letters of the alphabet, denoting the alphabet song. She also frequently requests “Ra Ra Ra” (The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round) and “Ro Ro Ro” (Row Row Row Your Boat). She now has words for raisins, pudding, peas, apricots, and the list is growing so fast it is impossible to keep up with. About three weeks ago I wrote down all the words she was using and there were about 30. I have no idea how many she has now. Word acquisition at 19 months seems exponential. She is also picking up some choice phrases, often from her grandmother, such as “nice rice,” “GRReen beans,” and the old favorite “peas please.”

Katya’s character is developing more and more.

•She likes order. If you give her peas and corn for dinner and put them in different compartments on her four compartment plate, she will move any peas which strayed into the corn to the pea section, and the same for the corn. She will also reorder her toys if they get out of order. A couple days ago she found a fisher price people’s chair in her plastic food bin and ran to put it into the fisher price people bin.

•She loves water. She loves drinking water, bathing in water, swimming in water, spitting water on the floor, pouring water on the floor. She spends her swimming classes either under water or floating on her back.

•She is very responsible. If you make the sound of her baby crying, she will stop whatever she is doing and run over to her doll and pick it up (and then, on the flip side, drop it on its head). This is very useful when she is doing something she isn’t supposed to be doing or when she is working herself up into a fit about something else. It has the strong power to sway her mind.

•She is very loving. She loves to kiss people and blow kisses. This afternoon when she got up from her nap, the first thing she did before letting me lift her out of her crib was to pick up “Mousy,” turn him to face her and give him a kiss. Then she laid him down and held up her arms, ready to be lifted out of her crib.

•So far, she is persuadable. “Mousy” is the stuffed mouse that sleeps with her. When it is time for bed, Mousy calls her to let her know he is waiting for her. Very often this will convince her to let me take her upstairs to bed when before it she had been disinclined to go with me. My parents tell me this trait is likely to change within the year.

Now, I have some other important family news…

It seems that Katya will not be an only child for long. We are expecting our second baby in June and are very excited. So far, I am little over 3 months pregnant and things are going well. I am extremely thankful that the first trimester is over, as it was more trying that the last time. It seemed that I was submerged in nauseating incapacitating water for about 14 weeks… but only realized how far gone I had been when I started to emerge. I realized that I had even been too tired in those weeks even to talk to myself. Surely too tired to criticize or second guess myself. I was surprised that when my energy started to come back, so did the judging voice, the guilt voice, the “what if” voice. It is perhaps the one good thing I know about first trimesters.

Anyway, happy holidays and happy new year to you! May your new year be happy and healthy.

I hope to be in touch more often now that the worst is past.

fall leaves

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:34:44 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Whew! I just finished a mad clean of the house. I vacuumed and mopped all the floors in the house – except Katya’s because she is sleeping. In fact, I have mopped myself into the corner with my desk and computer. So I figured I would try to finish this update which I started on August 4. It has been such an amazing time, these last two months. Katya is growing and learning faster than seems possible.

• Katya discovers more and more.

Katya discovered how turn the volume up and down on the stereo.

She discovered cool round buttons on my laptop which turn blue when she presses them.

She learned how to turn on the TV. The first time she did it, it scared her to death.

She discovered the joy of opening cabinet doors and drawers and pulling out all the contents.

• She begins to understand more and more.

Katya points at the book I am reading. I say, “This is my book. Do you have books? Where are your books?” Katya stands there several moments with a look of concentration on her face. Then she turns around, walks to her bookshelf, chooses a book, and brings it over. I look at the book, see that it is in Russian, and say, “that is a book that Papa can read to you.’ Without hesitation, Katya turns around, walks over to Papa, hands him the book, and holds up her arms so he can lift her onto his lap.

One morning when I was dressing Katya, I lost the pair of socks I was going to put on her. I looked all over the changing table but couldn’t find them. So I got out another pair, finished dressing her and put her on the floor. I hadn’t walked three steps when she shouted to me, pointed at the sock on her foot, and pointed under the dresser. Sure enough, there were the missing socks.

Katya now knows what eyes, noses, mouths, ears, teeth, hands, feet and (last and most important) belly buttons are. She knows what socks and shoes are. She knows what pens, pencils and crayons are for (… to eat, of course).

•She begins to express more and more:

She knows exactly where she wants me to sit these days. She expresses it by pointing at the floor or chair where I am to sit and shouting “MAMA AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…” The shout lasts until I have assumed my appointed seat.

She has created her first word. A small toy car is a “go go.”

She says “Mama” and “Papa” really clearly now. She even sings little songs like “Mamama mamama, mamama…” She also sings “Rrrnd rrrnd rrrnd,” which is, as you know, “the wheels on the bus/car/truck/wagon go round and round, round and round, round and round.” She sings this for blocks while riding in her stroller. She is getting “grandma” and grandpa” clearer and clearer but I can’t really transcribe what she says. It sounds something like “bababa.” “AH” is cat. “Bhk” is book. “Hrch” is yes. She now babbles in what sounds so much like real sentences that it takes me a while to be sure that she didn’t just say something real.
She still uses signs. Her most popular signs these days are: eat, bottle, more, train, bird, helicopter, change my diaper, and cat.

•She begins to decide more and more things:

Katya decided for the first time that she didn’t like wearing a dress. She looked up at me and ripped at her dress, pulling it this way and that, making a growly strangling sound. It was very clear that she was saying “Look, mom. I can’t play in this thing. My legs are all tangled up.”

Just last night, for the first time ever, she started to decide what bedtime songs she wanted to hear and which she didn’t. She is apparently not a fan of the song “The Rose.” (You know… “When the night has been to lonely and the road has been too long, and you think that love it only for the lucky and the strong, just remember that in the winter far beneath the bitter snow, lies the seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes the rose.”) She rejected this song, not once, not twice, but several times.

•She begins to play more and more complex games:

She loves her teddy bears, mice and baby dolls. She carries them around, hugs them, kisses them, feeds them and gives them something to drink.

She will walk round in circles getting a kiss from everyone – a kiss from Papa, a kiss from Mama, a kiss from Grandma, a kiss from Grandpa, and back around.

She can fit the shapes into the box with holes for shapes. It is still trial and error, but just a month ago she couldn’t orient the pieces so that they would fall in.

She loves to screw and unscrew bottle tops (if you will sit for hours on end holding the bottle for her.)

She loves to play in the sand box now. She can dig with a shovel and put dirt in a bucket. She can expertly mash sand towers. And as all the other babies, she ignores all her own toys but loves to use other kids’ toys.

She has become a great leaf collector. No leave is too small or too disintegrated to escape her notice. She collects all sizes, shapes, colors and conditions of leaf. She can spend hours walking down the street examining leaves, dropping leaves, recovering leaves, screaming about leaves, laughing with leaves and transferring leaves from her hand to my hand and back again.

•She begins to become more physically adept:

She pulled herself up to standing for the first (and almost last) time. In this area, Katya is not ambitious. She seems to feel no drive whatsoever to master all the skills which would render her completely independent.
She can bend over, rest her weight on her hands, then straighten back up.

She went up three stairs by herself in the park the other day by holding on and pulling herself up.

She often tries to crawl. (She never crawled before. She just started walking) From sitting she moves onto her hands, but then her legs get all tangled and she can’t move anywhere. She hasn’t quite got the idea of what to do with her legs.

•Our house begins to look more and more like a toy store circus disaster. It only looks relatively put together on the days she stays with her grandparents.

first steps

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:27:54 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

June 14, 2007: Katya took her very first steps all by herself. (WOW!!)

I was intending to be cavalier about it. I had convinced myself that since she will take so many steps in her life that it was really not so important to see the first ones. But, boy, when she did it, so unexpectedly, I was astounded at the surge of joy we both felt. She was ecstatic, maybe even more excited than I was.

I was sitting on the floor intending to help her practice standing up on her own. I spread out my legs, set her in the middle, counted to three and let go. Instead of just standing there, she took four steps and landed in my arms laughing and squealing. Then we tried it again, and again and again. Each time I would set her facing me and she would walk toward me. What a rush!

June 21, 2007: Katya learned to eat using the dipping technique.

None of the mommy books prepared me for the fact that babies learn the dipping technique so early. (You know, the technique you use at cocktail parties to dip your broccoli and carrots in sour cream dip.) In fact, none of them mention it at all. I was feeding Katya lunch and having a little snack myself. She had toast, cauliflower, carrots, pasta and a bowl of yogurt. I just had a cracker with cheese. I was bored with my cheese, so I dipped my cracker in Katya’s yogurt … looked away … and when I looked back, Katya was dipping her toast in the yogurt. Then she dipped her cauliflower and put it in her mouth. Then she dipped her carrots, pasta, other toast, fingers, cauliflower, everything, yogurt, yogurt, yogurtpastacarrotmash.

Nor did she forget about it at dinner. There we were, dipping again. Her dipping skills are pretty good. Sometimes she loses the sense of it all and starts total emersion, but generally she sticks with dipping. You can tell the difference between dipping and emersion by the amount of dipping substance on her hands. If just her fingers are covered, she is practicing dipping. If more of her hand is covered, she has probably been toying with emersion. If dipping substance can be found on her elbow or in her armpit, she has been involved in total emersion.

June 23, 2007: Katya danced at the Vision Festival.

The Vision Festival is an annual festival of free jazz and other kinds of free music here in New York. As some of you may remember, Peter and I used to plunge into the festival for the whole week, listening to music, cooking, serving, shopping, and taking thousands of photos. In the past two years, we have done less cooking, serving and shopping because these things are a little harder to do with a baby. Instead, we took the baby to the festival and she loved it! Even though she was only there for two out of about 30 sets, it felt like it took more energy than all the cooking shopping listening serving of the past years during all 30 sets. Partly this is because when at a concert, it is important to encourage Katya to keep quiet. At 14 months, for Katya, this means walking and walking and walking and walking. And if she is tired and has skipped a nap (which she had) it means walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking. I hope you are forming the right mental picture. She is not confident enough yet to do all this walking on her own without a parental finger. So for me, it meant stooping and stooping and stooping and stooping and stooping.

The one piece of respite for me and my back was during the second set (which Katya really liked) when Katya stood on the balcony watching the musicians holding the wall and dancing (wiggling and jiggling and popping up and down). It was exuberantly adorable.

June 25, 2007: Katya is mastering the spoon self-feeding method.

And finally, Katya is getting really good at feeding herself with a spoon. This has to do in part with an executive parental decision about the foolishness of the popular baby safety spoons which we had been using. These spoons are slick and clever. They are made of some kind of rubbery plastic which changes color when they come in contact with hot food. The color change is intended to warn parents when the food is too hot. Its main flaw is the fact that the portion of the spoon that changes color when in contact with hot food is almost always covered by the food in question. So unless you are serving your baby clear broth, it is not excessively useful. It also has another flaw, one which makes it hard to teach a baby to use it on her own: there is not much area in the valley of the spoon. Therefore, food is much more likely to fall off the spoon before the baby can get the spoon to her mouth. So we have switched to good old fashioned grandma/grandpa/papa/mama hand-me-down metal baby spoons. These work ever so much better and Katya is getting along extremely well with them. She can use them to eat cereal and yogurt and she doesn’t get so frustrated with it all.

Aside: Safety baby forks are also less than useful because their tongs are dull and therefore baby can under no circumstances pierce food with them.

smack, smack, smack

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:06:50 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

For the past three hours, I have heard nothing but *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack.* There is nothing wrong with our pipes. There are no cables hitting our building. None of our neighbors is having a fight. It is the sound of little lips smacking together to tell me that Katya is hungry.

Katya got up at 7 am. *smack, smack, smack* Time for a bottle of milk. She finished the milk. *smack, smack, smack* Time for breakfast. *smack, smack, smack* She had a bowl of cheerios with milk. Yum. *smack, smack, smack* She points. Mixed baby cereal with yogurt. Yum. She tries to use the spoon all by herself. *smack, smack, smack* Eggs and toast are not ready yet. Ah, we’ll cut the melon. *smack, smack, smack* Mmmmm. Good melon. Oh, toast, TOAST, TOOAAASSST. *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* What, eggs? EGGS? Where are my eggs? MY EGGS? *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* Eggs on the floor. Yuck! apples, Apples, APPLES *smack, smack, smack* Mmmm. Good apple. Apple on the floor. Melon on the floor. Spoon on the floor. All done? Yes, yes. All done. Out of the high chair. Ohhhh!! Ohhh!! Point. Point. Point. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Time for a sushka (a hard small bagel-looking bread food). Sushka. Sushka. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Sushka on the floor. Plays a little while. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* What do you want now? *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* WHAT DO YOU WANT? Oh! Time for juice. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Drinks her juice. Plays a little while. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* WHAT DO YOU WANT… WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT NOW…??!?!?!?!? *smack, smack, smack*

In additions to *smack, smack, smack* Katya is developing quite a vocabulary. She has decided on an alliterative word acquisition style and she has chosen B as her first letter. Therefore, she can say:

Buah (book)
Ba (ball)
Baa (Balloon)
Brella (umbrella)
Bahbah (baby)
Beow (the B cat word, closely related to meow)
Bir (bird, and she can do the sign for this too)
Baa (what sheep say)
Bu-un (button)
Boo

Out of context, her pronunciation of most of these words closely resembles “BA.”

She can also say “Mama” (and variations like mamamama, mamama, and mamamamama), “Papa,”
“Ampapa” (grandpa), “Bahma” (grandma), and “Emah” (Emma). She has at least once been able to say “apple,” “sticky hands” and “boo well.” And she can sign for Milk, Eat, More, Bird, Airplane and Helicopter. It is actually possible to argue with her about whether you have just heard an airplane or a helicopter.

When resting from practicing her words (or often while practicing her words), Katya is trying like to devil to walk. She is highly proficient at skirting walls and furniture and her favorite thing is to hold someone’s fingers while walking around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around . . . and around the house. She tries to balance on her own and has done it for a count of five or so. She gets absolutely giddy after each attempt. Against the adamant advice of several loved ones, I am strongly rooting for Katya to walk on her own. My back is, and even my fingers are, extremely tired.

Katya spends much time with her grandparents. They take care of her two days a week and are often found taking her for a walk or playing in the backyard with her on their off-days. She loves it and often demands to visit them by pointing at our front door and screeching “ahhhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh.” As you may expect, her grandparents have had quite an influence on her. I came home from work several weeks ago only to be informed that if I want my baby to drink milk I will have to do “spa baby.” “Spa baby” is the practice of giving Katya her preferred drink (usually milk, but sometimes kefir, yogurt or juice) while she is lying down, preferably wrapped in a fluffy white towel on a soft green lawn chair. Somehow, quite mysteriously, Katya has developed the preference for ice water in her sippy cup and she likes to choose her own cookie. Not the kind of cookie. The exact cookie. Otherwise, she says, it is not so tasty. She likes to play the backs of chairs like a harp and knows that rubber bands can make very interesting sounds. She is excited about going to jail (sitting backwards in a chair looking out at her grandpa) and she relies on her four o’clock walk with the dog as a time to think over the events of the day and relax.

Katya had quite a nice first birthday last month. At her 1-year doctor’s visit everything was good. She weighed 19.4 pounds. She was 27 inches long. And her head is still very large.

On other fronts…

– I am in a week of relaxation and depressurization. I just got a new job which I will start next week. My old job ended two days ago. (This may be the reason that it is possible for me to write this update, the first in two months!) Starting the end of next week, I will be Coordinator of Training and Technical Assistance at the OPTIONS Center for Educational and Career Choice. Some of you may remember that I worked there years ago when I just graduated from college. In this job I will be training organizations and counselors throughout New York City to help kids get into and stay in college.

– Peter will have a photo exhibit at the Vision Festival here in New York City in about a week. His exhibition includes two series: 1) dancers and musicians 2) musicians and cities.

— In April we had a new addition to our family. Trevor Miyoko Lorimer was born to my cousin Tony and his wife Abby in California. She is an absolute adorable beauty.

—————————————————————-

This update was brought to you by the letter B and the number 1.

toofy (a.k.a. katya)

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:56:12 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Toofy, as she is now called by her near and dear, is growing like a weed. A good weed, you understand, like a dandelion. The name Toofy comes from her two large (but still a little short) front teeth. Her smile is now a toofy smile.

Toofy is a sassy puss these days. She chases the dog and the cats in her walker. She carries our plastic yellow gallon jug of vegetable oil across the kitchen. She eats carrots, broccoli, macaroni, cheese, and baloney with her hands. She eats cereal, yogurt, apple sauce, squash, garlic herb goat cheese and babaganush from a spoon. She can drink from her sippy cup by herself and she can hold her own bottle.

She loves to swing in the swings in the park. She just laughs and coos and laughs and coos. She can slide down the slide of her own accord. If you count, 1 2 3, she will lead forward and beam all the way down. She claps and gives high fives (and fours, and sometimes ones). She points and says “PaPa,” “Bahbah”* and “Buah.” She likes to feel the backside of our teeth and she tries to scratch off our moles.

Life is never quite dull when Toofy is around. She doesn’t crawl and she doesn’t walk but she does roll. She can roll 4 feet in 5 seconds. She rolls to get her stray toys. She rolls to examine the underside of our reclining chair. She rolls to stay close to her mommy. She likes to practice standing and she sometimes moves her feet like walking. But one thing about Toofy is that she goes at her own pace and for the most part she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.

We are still reading many of the same books but her favorites are constantly changing. Pat the Bunny had been out of favor for a long time but has recently experienced a great resurgence. Her literary horizons are expanding: her favorite book right now is really my book. It is called “Your Baby and Child” and it has lots of pictures of bahbahs. Whenever I pick it up it is imperative that Katya sees the bahbahs.

She still thinks farting from the mouth is by far the funniest sound to make – but she has just discovered the puckered kiss sound. She has a wide variety of other sounds too. The most common recently is a regularly repeating (extremely insistent) moan of frustration which indicates serious teething (and sometime just general annoyance). When she is not being entertained by one of her parents, grandparents, or occasional guests, she remembers how much her mouth hurts and she moans. Her fifth tooth made its appearance beyond the gum yesterday and we think 6, 7, and 8 (not to mention 9 and 10) are on their way.

Sadly, Katya’s mommy has just been ousted from her starring role as bedtime singer by a stuffed green foot-tall frog. Baby Tad (as it likes to be called and consequently announces before every singing session) sings The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Where Oh Where Can My Little Dog Be, Hickory Dickory Dock and a number of other timeless baby hits. Baby Tad is also able to simulate a full orchestra and indeed some of its songs don’t have any words at all. Baby Tad can also make that puckered kiss sound and does so right before saying “I LUUVVV you.”

Katya is doing really well with her signs. She can now sign for “milk,” “more,” and “eat.” The other day in the park when her grandmother tried to take her out of the swing, she signed for “MORE.” We are now working with her on some new signs, like “cat,” “dog,” “airplane,” “bird,” and “bed.” She is more and more observant. She now has many objects she has to visit each day – and the list is growing. She has the ceramic pumpkin, plants and little wooden man downstairs. On the way upstairs, she has to greet the bead at the end of the string to the light fixture of the room in which she naps when she stays with her grandparents and the stained glass light in the entrance hall. Just today she noticed a yellow glass sun that hangs on our window. She demanded to visit it at least five times before she went to bed.

And she loves to play peek-a-boo, although she knows the game as just Boo. She plays it with books, toys, bibs, clothes and kitchen utensils. But the best is when we put her to bed, we let the blanket fall over her face. She usually waits completely still for many seconds before suddenly kicking and dramatically uncovering her laughing face.

*Bahbah = Baby

saturday morning funnies

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:07:33 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

A quick update on the morn of Katya’s 10-month birthday:

-Katya is such a big girl now that she takes a bath in the real bathtub, without a kiddie tub. This morning she got so excited about a small plastic musical dolphin in a life preserver that she took a face first dive into the water to grab him. Of course, she did not think it was at all funny and we had to have a little break from the bath for her to recover her equanimity.

-When I was feeding Katya her juice a little later, we heard a loud SPLASH. Since I had not yet drained the water from Katya’s bath I had no trouble in deducing that one of the cats had fallen/jumped into the bath tub.* And specifically, it was pretty clear that it must have been either Pippin or BoBo as they have both been involved in unsafe water exploration episodes before: Pippin in a tub full of water and Clorox, BoBo in the toilet. And sure enough, there was BoBo, dripping wet and MORTIFIED. Needless to say, he hid until dry and then some.

-As I was just putting Katya down to nap, we were reading a book together. I was in a playful mommy mood and feeling a little guilty that perhaps we have given too much attention to books in Katya’s short life. So instead of turning the page, I started what I thought would be an amusing game by thipping the left page so that it jiggled back and forth. I hadn’t done this three times when Katya reached over and slammed the page down so that we could continue reading.

*The mode of expressing this thought is a result of the 2500 pages of Sherlock Holmes that I have just recently read.

important picture alert

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:07:31 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Important new pictures have been posted. Go to http://gallery.sonicbeet.com/login.php ** to see:
— pictures of Katya with her babushka (grandmother), dvorodni brat (cousin), parents and Maggie the dog.
— pictures of Annabelle Francis Repoli (Liz and Andrew’s daughter)
— pictures of Annabelle and Katya together
— pictures of Katya in her Microsoft outfit.

** if you don’t have the password, e-mail one of us and we will send it to you.

a big unexpected much

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:19:09 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

If a word is a sound associated with an object or concept, then Katya’s first English word and second word ever (after ANG!) is: BUAH.

“Buah” for “Book.”

We read a lot of books. We look at pictures in books. We keep at least one book in every play place. But it never occurred to me that her very first word in an established historical language would be BOOK.

I am teary-eyed-pleased.

just the little muches

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:40:44 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

A lot of nothing muches have been going on lately and added all together they add up to quite a lot. Well, you might not say “nothing” muches but rather “exciting-but-too-small-for-an-entire-update” muches.

So here they go:

•Katya learned how to put cherios in her mouth, and then take them out again.

•Several days later she learned how to put them in her mouth and leave them there.

•Katya can gum cherios, zwieback toasts, arrowroot cookies, шушки, and little soft pieces of banana, avocado, potato, carrot, and celery.

•She can also gum bagels but the pieces that come off are too big and they gag her.

•Katya can wipe food in her nose, eye and ear all in the same swift hand stroke.

•No matter how small the pieces (even ground up and mixed with six cups of liquid), chicken makes Katya gag and act like she will regurgitate her entire meal if she tastes it again.

•Katya can sit on the floor and play for a long time by herself. She likes emptying containers, beating things on the floor, chewing on string, and shaking things that rattle.

•Katya loves to be upside down.

•Katya ZOOMS around in her walker now – alternatively pulling things from shelves and running over my little toes as she tries to stay close to me while I am cooking.

•Katya sleeps almost exclusively on her stomach (so now all the urine collects at the front of her diaper and not the back – practical parental point).

•Katya gets to pick the books we read at bedtime – and now she more and more loves books with photographs of real things, especially if the real things happen to be babies or cats.

•Katya is in the early stages of trying to crawl. She wiggles and waggles all over the floor on her rounded belly point (my personal term) – pressing her head and arms up on one side and her feet up on the other. The concept of knees under belly has not yet come to her nor is she appreciative of hints in that direction.

•In fact, she is wholesale impatient of hints about anything. She has made it quite clear that she simply prefers sucking her finger even though we have several times pointed out to her that if she sucked her thumb she would not poke herself in the eye repeatedly.

•Katya has become wary of strangers. If she hasn’t seen you regularly and you walk purposefully up to her, she will start to cry. Then if she finds you looking at her, she will start to cry again. But, if you stay around for several hours, she slowly might make friends with you.

•Katya is often in that observant mood which causes her to stare adults down. She watches them intently with the utmost gravity and is not in the least swayed or deterred by any coaxing or crazy antics.

•The doctor (who is appeased for the time being about Katya’s giant head after hearing with amazement the head sizes of Katya’s immediate relatives) asked if Katya was cooing yet. I said “I don’t know what cooing is, but Katya is saying “a-da. A-da-da-da.Da-da-DA.” “OH!!!” our doctor exclaimed jumping a little in her chair, “She is Babbling!! That’s just great.” So, Katya is babbling.

•Katya’s hair has grown long enough so that it is possible for me to pull it when trying to snap her bib behind her neck. And as you know, pulling someone’s hair is not productive of a friendly eating attitude.

•Katya has a tooth!! Not visible to the casual eye – but beware all ye who try to put your finger in her mouth. It may come out with a nasty little wound.

•Katya can and does do the sign language sign for milk.

I don’t remember anymore – but I almost didn’t remember about the tooth and that is one of the most important ones.

literary progressions

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:55:42 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

Katya reading Pat the Bunny…

Pages One and Two: (theater narrator voice) Here are Paul and Judy. They can do lots of things. You can do lots of things too.
3 months old: No reaction
6 months old: Looks up. Big smile. Remembers the book. It is familiar.
9 months old: Impatience. Turn the page!

Pages Three and Four: Judy can pat the bunny. Now You pat the bunny.
3 months old: Allows me to pick up her hand and put it on the bunny.
6 months old: Starts to put her hand on the bunny herself.
9 months old: Scratches the bunny and the rest of the page with her fingers. Scratches all the bunnies she sees in the book.

Pages Five and Six: Judy can play peek-a-boo with Paul. Now You play peek-a-boo with Paul.
3 months old: Watches as I pick up the blanket over Paul’s face and say “Boo!”
6 months old: Continues watching as I pick up the blanket and say “Boo!”
9 months old: Picks up the blanket herself and whenever she uncovers Paul’s face I say “boo!” Enjoys lengthy bouts of this game.

Pages Seven and Eight: Paul can smell the flowers. Now You smell the flowers.
3 months old: No reaction.
6 months old: No reaction.
9 months old: Twice she has stuck her face to the book as if she would like to eat as well as smell the flowers.

Pages Nine and Ten: Judy can look in the mirror. Now You look in the mirror.
3 months old: Big Smile.
6 months old: Smile.
9 months old: She is over it. Deigns to grant the page a smile on rare and fleeting occasions.

Pages Eleven and Twelve: Judy can feel daddy’s scratchy face. Now You feel daddy’s scratchy face.
3 months old: Hides her hand so that I can not help her feel daddy’s scratchy face.
6 months old: Continues to hide her hand and resist any effort on my part to help her feel daddy’s scratchy face.
9 months old: Bravely tries to feel daddy’s face a couple times. Conclusion: Does not like this page. “Throw it on the floor, mommy! ….Ok, if you don’t, I will!”

Pages Thirteen and Fourteen: That’s all. Bye bye. Can you say “Bye Bye”? Paul and Judy are waving bye bye to You.
3 months old: No reaction.
6 months old: Starts to watch me waving Bye Bye.
9 months old: Keeps watching the bye bye wave. Almost never looks at the page itself.

multi-siting

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:45:54 GMT

Originally published at radish times. You can comment here or there.

I never thought I would do it. I never imagined it in all the 34 years of my life: Now, not only can I multi-task, I can also multi-site. I even have a multi-announcement:

I have added to both “dontbearadish.com” and my live journal site all the e-mails I have written to my family and friends over the past five or six years. Called “updates,” these e-mails range over many topics. The most numerous e-mails were written in 2002 and are all about life in Prague.

I am posting them with love. Enjoy!

the adventure of the big-headed baby

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 04:09:26 GMT

Besides reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories ever written and thinking constantly about the unhappy sagas going on at work, I have been having baby adventures. There are a number of baby adventures which do not deserve a written tribute (mostly on the order of “My Baby Shits All The Time,” “My Baby Changes Her Eating Habits Every Day,” “I Don’t Even Remember The Last Time My Baby Shit,” “The New Eating Habits of My Baby,” “The Correct Consistency of Half-Formula-Fed Half-Solid-Food-Fed Baby Shit,” “When Will My Baby Ever Do The Same Thing Two Days In A Row?,” “The exact feeling of not-to-hard-almost-adult-but-perfectly-normal baby shit,”)

There is one adventure which we recently had that has to be written – mostly because I don’t feel like I have yet been able to accurately express my (absolutely mixed) feelings about it. When you are pregnant, the books, articles and mommy-blogs tell you all the things you should and shouldn’t do when pregnant:

• Don’t drink coffee
• Only drink one cup of coffee
• Drink coffee, but not more than two cups
• Drink as much coffee as you want up to three cups
• Don’t drink alcohol
• Drink when you need to but try to keep it to one drink a week
• Don’t drink in the first trimester but after that drink responsibly and not more than one drink a day
• Excessive alcohol consumption can seriously harm your unborn baby in any trimester but especially in the first fourteen weeks after which you can consume any amount of alcohol that is not technically defined as excessive which changes depending on the weight, age and sex of your unborn child and yourself.
• Don’t eat blue cheese
• Don’t eat feta cheese
• Don’t eat unpasteurized cheeses, but pasteurized blue or feta cheese are all right
• Don’t eat unpasteurized cheese, but pasteurized feta is ok but not blue cheese because something about its blueness can harm your baby.
• Don’t eat unpasteurized cheeses in Europe and especially avoid sheep and goat cheeses of any kind regardless of their pasteurization status because sheep and goats are dangerous producers of the chemicals which harm unborn human, but not goatitious, children.
• Don’t eat raw vegetables in Italy for the same reasons mentioned above minus the comment about goatitious children.

Amazingly having got past this brief list of the most important rules of pregnancy, you figure (idealistically, and bordering on idiotically) that you have been through the worst and now things will lighten up. You have never known HOW WRONG YOU COULD BE.

When you actually have a baby, things get worse:

• Don’t feed a baby anything but breast milk for at least a year.
• Don’t feed a baby anything thing but breast milk, or the proper formula recommended by your pediatrician, for the infant period lasting for three to six months and in some places up to a year.
• Don’t feed a baby solid foods until four to six months or until your pediatrician (acting on guidelines you will never read about) tells you to start, which could be as early as two months adjusted if your baby was born before its due date.
• Don’t’ feed your baby fruit juices until later; it will just divert the baby from eating more nutritious breast milk or formula, or more virtuous water. (Do you want a fat baby??? Huh?? Do you?)
• Don’t feed a baby anything that you would not eat until it is old enough to know you would not eat it but you are forcing it to eat it anyway.
• Don’t feed your baby wheat cereal until eight months, but you can begin with barley cereal as early as four months, though you may want to hold off on the rice cereal until six months to avoid constipation unless you disregard the rule about feeding your baby juices and decide to feed your baby prune juice to loosen its bowels simultaneously with the infant formula and iron-fortified rice cereal, keeping in mind that oatmeal is also an early alternative if your baby will not spit it in your face for the first month that you try to use it.
• Corn cereal can be fed anytime (IF YOU CAN FIND IT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.) HA! HA! HA!
• Your baby should gain weight regularly every month.
• Your baby should grow longer every month.
• Your baby’s head should grow bigger every month.
• Your baby’s head should not stay the same size two months in a row; but it should also not grow larger than its percentile in any month.
• If your baby’s head does grow every month and continues to grow past the month when it reaches the 50th percentile for its age, you must consult with your doctor about big-headedness.

Big-headedness:

I stop at this rule because it was the basis of this entire update.

• If your baby’s head does grow every month and continues to grow past the month when it reaches the 50th percentile for its age, you must consult with your doctor about big-headedness.

Last Thursday I had to consult with Katya’s pediatrician about her big-headedness. For verily, she is a big-headed baby. It seems that her head is currently above the 95th percentile of head sizes for her age. This may seem alarming but in the course of events Katya’s pediatrician also took my head size which happened to be over the 98th percentile for the size of a woman’s head. She asked me to take Peter’s head size which turned out to be WAY OVER the 98th percentile for the size of a man’s head. In fact, there is no one in our family whose head (as far as I have the resources to determine) is under the 98th percentile for the size of a family person’s head. I also learned that Peter’s parents were also harrassed by doctors discussing the large size of their baby’s head.

So in the end it seems that Katya may be affected in the following ways:

• She may have to have a head sonogram, if her pediatrician doesn’t see the family trend as a genetic indicator of the potential size of her head. This means that she will have to have that sticky cold gel applied to her head in a cold almost empty room in the basement of Long Island College Hospital. This has happened to her before. OR
• She may (and most likely will) have trouble finding hats that fit. This will most likely be the case for her whole life (unless more big-headed people start buying and demanding better-sized hats), OR
• She may listen to this story over and over again while growing up and may get a big-sized-head complex which it will cost thousands in psychotherapy bills to overcome, OR
• Nothing very much may happen to her, except that she will understand someday that she is genetically related to her genetic relations.

I don’t know if you can understand from all this how exactly I feel about the adventure of the big-headed baby. But, I will say this: I really want to keep my baby safe and healthy but sometimes I feel so strongly that we have gone too far into fear and left life along the way.

...two years later

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:24:11 GMT

As you know, I never ever post anything here on live journal. BUT, I do have a real live site now. Go to http://www.dontbearadish.com/ And there, you will find an active up-to-date blog.

Little sub-miracles

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:59:23 GMT

I was just on the subway, on the C train, coming to work. If you know about the C train you will know that in the area around the doors there is nothing to hold on to and when it is crowded you are on your own. You may also know that it is a pretty jerky ride from High Street to Broadway Nassau. Usually I assume the "balance pose": feet facing in opposite directions spread a little bit apart. This morning I didn't feel balanced, it being the end of a long week. I was wondering what the lady next to me would do if I fell into her with all my weight when I remembered a song I heard recently about miracles. It says "when the roads that you look down are all dead ends, look up. You can see if you just look up." So I looked up. And lo and behold, the ceiling was low enough to touch. So I reached up to the ceiling and got not only balance but the chance to stretch my tired morning muscles all the way across the East River. :)

Take Two for Today

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 03:52:43 GMT

Finding clever things to do

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 20:04:24 GMT

So... I thought I would be extremely clever today and instead of planning to read all day while I have to be at the University for six hours, I would do research. The result: I am sitting here at the computer in the library and have for the past 30 minutes at least been reading Live Journal. :) (Something I don't often do, but excellent for playing around and not studying!) I decided to commemorate this unusual occasion by ... oh my! ... actually updating my journal! :O All that said to say: Привет!

results

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:29:24 GMT

Which File Extension are You?