Bliss of Life

Lily: Achoo.  Achoo Mommy.

Achoo means I love you.

Lily:  Pool? Pooool? (The last pool was accented with delight.)

Lily:  Yes. (It was the answer to her question.)

It was suggested, discussed and decided that we were going to the pool.  Unfortunately, we were not.

Lily:  Mama. Mama. Mama. Watch this. Watch this Mama.

This is a common request.  Usually, she is “jumping,” which is actually off a step with a bounce, kicking or throwing a ball, climbing on or off the bed, jumping in place.

Lily:  Moon high.  Moon high.  I touch.

She then jumps to touch it.

Before Bedtime, when we are in the process of changing her diaper and putting on her night clothes, she often crawls in the bed, pulls the sheet over her head and her tiny naked body and asks to be tickled through the sheet.  She LOVES it.  I think the sheets are cool and soft on her skin, and when they are pulled up over her head, she doesn’t know when the tickling is going to happen, which makes it even better.

And she is a fantastic dancer.  So far, she has busted into an adult ballet class, a childrens theater dance class, and she went to a belly dancing class with me.

When I put Lily to bed tonight I talked about all the events of the day, right up to the last and final meltdown.  We spent the late afternoon at our friends Sam and Mia’s house.  We played, ate manicotti, peas, and pears, and then Lily watched/helped Sam take his night time bath.  Then it was time for him to go to bed, so we went downstairs and meltdown ensued.  She wanted to go upstairs again and I wouldn’t let her.  While we were in bed, talking about the day, I explained why she couldn’t go back upstairs.  Sam needed to go to sleep and he was going to nom with Mia.  He needed it to be quiet, so we needed to play downstairs.  I assigned words to her feelings.  I told her that she felt angry and mad because I wouldn’t let her go upstairs, and she showed me how angry and mad she was by crying and yelling really loud.  I knew she was listening carefully, but I wasn’t sure how much she understood until she reenacted her meltdown in a silly exaggerated way that made us both laugh.

Meltdowns are part of our everyday landscape now.  Some are worse than others.  I used to be able to squat down on my knees, open my arms to her and when she was ready, she would come to me, crying and upset, and let me hold her while she worked through it.  Now, it’s not so easy.  She hits and kicks and it’s often best for me to leave the room and take a minute for myself.  Engaging in a power struggle with a toddler is like fighting a land war in Asia.  Futile.  I thanked her for telling me how angry she felt.  I told her to keep telling  me how she feels because I love her and I want to know.  Then she crawled on me, put her face close to mine, touched my eyes and said, “Eyes.”  (She does this a lot right now–this identifying of body parts.) She touched my nose and said, “What’s this?”
“Nose,” I said.
Then she put her hands on my cheeks, pinched her lips together in a funny little slit (she is still trying out different puckering techniques) put her sweet baby mouth on my mine, touched my chin and said, “What’s this?”

Sometimes a door clicks.  The world falls open.  And my heart fills the space.

Life is a blurr.  Followed by whiplash.

I haven’t begun to do anything for Christmas.  No tree.  No wrapped packages.  No wreathes or garland.  And I heard once that poinsettias are poisonous, so none of those either.  Thank God Lily is only 19 months old.  I’ll have to get my act together before she turns four, which will be sometime next month if she keeps growing up so fast.  I just spent the past half hour looking at old blog posts.  I can’t believe how much she has changed in just six months.  My heart aches and leaps at the same time.  She just keeps becoming.  And I get to see more of who she is.

Here she is doing Baddha Konasana.  She sat herself down on the floor and did it.  I’ve never shown her this posture before.  Apparently, she already knows it.  I am looking forwards to finding out what else she already knows.

In the past two months, Ben has been out of town more days than he’s been home.  Work has kept him on the road, or in this case, on the plane.  Life feels hectic.  I’m never caught up on laundry, dishes, groceries or sleep.  And our Lily is busy doing all sorts of things like, cutting molars, catching the flu, sharing it with Mama, and not sleeping through the night.

It’s been tough.

But there are bright spots, like listening to Lily talk.  She says lots of words these days.  Some of her favorites are…  dog (she drags out the word like a soccer commentator yelling GOAL!!!), ouch (which is always paired with repeated open handed hitting so that you fully grasp the meaning of the word, hot (said with her hands spread above the suspected object as if feeling heat coming from it), hat (not to be confused with hot, like we did for weeks), hi (spoken with a quick wave), Godiva, Sasha, Papa, Mama, nom (our word for nursing) and her favorite word so far, NO.

Last night Ben watched Lily take several toys out of her toy boxes and sort them in three different piles according to how much she liked them.  I’m not sure that I would have been able to figure out her sorting criteria, but he could.  The two toys that made up the group of toys she likes most were among the first two toys that Ben bought for her right after she was born.  She actually hugged one of them.

Below is a picture from Halloween.  She was a little princess.  It took her a while to get the hang of what we were doing.  At first she tried to give candy back to the people handing it to her.  Later, when she understood more of what was going on, she wanted nothing to do with the candy people were giving out.  Instead she signed the word for drink.  We had forgotten her sippy cup and she was thirsty.

Since my last post?

Really?

Well, I’ve been busy.  Lily is movin’ an shakin’ these days, which means I am too.  She is in a Mama-hold-me-all-the-time phase. It makes it kind of difficult to do things like eat, brush my teeth, use the bathroom, and blog.  Carrying a child around half the day is hard on the body.  I have knots and kinks all through my back, and my left hip feels like it’s permanently hitched to my 12th rib.  I can’t imagine how I’d feel, if she were a big baby.  Speaking of not having a big baby…

She had her 15 month check-up a couple weeks ago.

Height: 29.5 inches

Weight: 17.10 lbs

Head circumference: I don’t remember, but it’s in the 40th percentile.

She is little, not even on the percentile chart for weight, but she is healthy.  That’s not to say that I didn’t spend the last two weeks living in fear that I am somehow starving my child. Darn those pediatric check-ups!

And while I’m here (because heaven knows when I’ll get around to blogging again) take a good long look at this sweet little face.

This is the face of a story time bully.

She picks on kids two to three times her size.  She pushes them and chases them around wagging her finger saying, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na,” if they are being too disruptive by doing things like, dancing or sitting and eating a snack.  She steals toys from smaller children.  And the bigger ones too.  Now that I think about it, she steals snacks (apparently everyone else has better snacks) and feeds them to smaller babies whose mothers are terrified of the flu virus and her unknown germs.  She repays those mothers who have patiently dispensed their limited supply of snacks to her by giving them the stolen toys.  She is the Robinhood of toddler story time.

Except for the pushing.

We went to story time today at Family Connections.  As usual, we got there too late.  Today we couldn’t get into the actual story time room.  Instead we explored the play center/library with a handful of moms and toddlers who were also too tardy to enter.  But we were among friends, literally.  Lanell, my doula, and her little guy, Hugh, were there too.  They tried to sneak in late and were asked to leave.  Apparently, the room was too full.  It is a safety issue not a punishment, which is what it feels like, but we made do.  And when story time ended the play center filled with dozens and dozens of squirmy little people coming and going in all directions.

Lily walked up to our friends Josephine and Jen and said hello in her own Lily way.  And Josephine said hello right back in her own Josephine way.  Then I saw Stephanie, a mama in the new moms group that Lanell hosted last July.  I hadn’t seen her since Lily was about four months old.  We got to talking and Lily zigged and zagged from the play kitchen, to the dining room, to the library, to the interactive flower art, to the bead table, weaving her way through mamas and toddlers and babies.  She stole toys, got pushed for trying to steel toys, had a melt down, shook it off, climbed on a rocking chair, climbed on a stool and pulled books from the library stacks.  She stayed in my peripheral vision, moving, moving, moving, until she wasn’t there.  I looked in the area she was playing and made a joke to Stephanie about losing my child, but she wasn’t there.  She wasn’t by the door or the kitchen, not in the library stacks closest to me or near the story time room.  My mind locked onto useful information:  pink dress, creme bow, pink dress, creme bow.  My eyes darted from the doorway, to the adults, to the colors of the kids outfits.  I couldn’t think beyond finding her, and I couldn’t think of not finding her.

Shit.

Shit!

Then Stephanie said, “She’s over there.”

And she was.

I’ve never felt so relieved at the sight of a little pink dress with a creme bow on the collar.  She was behind a little nook on the other side of the kitchen.  When she saw me she walked over chatting about something, oblivious to the fact that she takes my heart with her everywhere she goes and all I can do is let her.  I gave it to her.  It’s hers.  I don’t want it back.

But this was my first I-can’t-find-my-child experience.  Scary as it was, it was my experience, not hers.  She wasn’t scared; she was chatty.  So I bent down and hugged her.

And you know what?

She hugged me back.

Today I made my 36th trip around the sun.  The day started with breakfast in bed and ended with a movie enjoyed with my two favorite Mungkornpanich men.  The funniest thing about my 36th birthday is that I had to check our flicker archives to see what I did for my 35th birthday.  (The memory is already going.)

This time last year was such blurr, with a new baby, nursing brain fog and all the sleep that slipped right through the cracks of my nights.  I’m kind of surprised I remember the things I do, like where I put the keys and the baby, who is really more of toddler now.  Can you believe it?  When did that happen?

I have lots of fun pictures of Bean lately, but no gumption to figure out how to post them, so until I do, you’re just going to have to trust me when I say that they are great and that Lily is adorable in them.

We’re busy folks over here.

Bipedal Locomotion

Lily is working on her walking skills.  Today at the grocery store she didn’t want to be in the carrier or the cart.  She wanted to walk.  She put one hand on the side of the grocery cart and helped me push it through the store.  When we were finished checking out she grabbed my wallet and walked away by herself.  No lie.

Language

One of her favorite words right now is THIS.  It sounds more like Dees.  She says it when she is playing or investigating something new.  For some reason I keep thinking that my brother, Christopher, used to say this too, but I’m not sure.  Memory is slippery.  She also likes to say Mama a lot.  It usually comes out like Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma.  She says Papa occasionally, when coerced, and I think she knows that Ben LOVES it when he hears it.  But lately she is calling Me and Ben Mama.  I’m not so sure I like that…

Food

I am happy to report that Bean’s soy yogurt and hemp milk days are coming to an end.  She still eats soy yogurt and drinks hemp milk, but she also eats bananas, lentils, mung beans and rice, gluten-free crackers, berries (occasionally), smoothies, oatmeal, black beans, eggs, Chinese broccoli, and raisins.  She loves the raisins.

Favorite things to do

She loves music.  She dances when she finds a song with a good beat or at least anything from the 80s.  She likes to clap along with music or snap her fingers.  She can’t really snap, but she saw me do it, so she mimics the motions and it is so freakin’ cute.  Clapping is one of her few ways of communicating.  She’ll point and clap and say, “Ooooo, Ooooo”  when she sees something she likes.  Sometimes, she’ll clap when she sees us bending over her little hammock to pick her up or when she nurses.  Her compliments to the chef, I guess. Speaking of food… she’s started dropping food to Godiva, our family dog, while she eats her own meal.  Sometimes she drops rejected green beans and carrots other times she happily shares her lentils–one bite for Lily, one bite for Godive.  It’s kind of sweet. She also likes to hold onto the cabinet door handles in the kitchen and and shake back and forth, pulling her weight against the tot locks Ben installed.  So far they are holding up.  And this list would be incomplete if I didn’t include her insatiable need to hug the pets.

Toddlerhood

She is definitely in it.  It being her toddler years.  She spends a lot of time feeling FRU-STAT-ED.  And she has good reason.  She’s working on balance and movement and growing teeth and inches everywhere, while trying to communicate even though her language developement is way behind her mental development.  It’s a lot for such a little body, which is why she has us.

Bean had her 1 year appointment with the pediatrician today.  The doctor gave her a once over and declared her to be a perfect baby.

Her 12 month stats are…

Head circumference:  17.75 inches

Length:   29.5 inches

Weight:  17.06 lbs

Yup, she’s a perfect baby.

And now for some birthday picks!

Here are some bonus picks of Lily eating lunch yesterday and enjoying a good book.

With a lot of help, prayers, tears of joy and loss and cursing (way too much cursing) we went from here…

(Birthday picture)

to here…

(First birthday pictures)

And she took her first steps today!  What a year!