2013: I Did It!

2013: I Did It!

One morning in September, Emmett, whose total vocabulary was just a few words, threw a toy on the ground, climbed down, picked it back up, held it up and yelled "I got it!" This kid decided to skip right to sentences.

2013.  Let’s recap.

Emmett’s Vocabulary to date:

Yeah

Noooo
I got it!

I did it!

Bubbles

bubble

Show

I do! I do! (Nearly always as a pair)

Wheee!

dip

chip

mama

Daa-deee

apple

bar

sheerpherGIRLS (which means Powerpuff Girls)

emmett

gum gum

bed

baba

wawa (for water)

sip

hug (which really means he wants to be picked up

stop

go

shammy (Sandwich)

up

down

outside

serral (cereal)

car

truck

petty (pretty)

awwww (usually while hugging)

slide

namnah (banana)

niff (sniff)

cheese

grape

baby

bug

puppy

surprise!

waffle

cookie

hi

hello

coffee

block

su-shine

buh-bye

tap

poopoo

butt

please

kookoo for thank you

phone

off

frah-fri (french fry)

sheep

ha-fah for HIGHFIVE.

^ Really, all the words I know are pretty much just more synonyms for those.

****

Isabel saw me using my iPhone and asked to see a picture of Doctor Who on it.  As should come as so surprise, I obliged and fed “Doctor Who” into google image search.  One of the first hits was a composite of all 11 Doctors Who.

She pointed at Tom Baker and said “It’s Doctor Who!”

She then pointed at the other gentlemen and asked “Who are those guys?”

I said, “Those guys are also Doctor Who.  They’re all the Doctor.”

She turned to me, and with a very serious and pitying face, said “Those guys are NOT Doctor Who.”

Which I couldn’t actually refute in any way.

So, between that and the fact that Emmett asks me for High-Fives, I’ve basically taught my kids everything I have to teach them.

Other 2013 items of note:

I quit my job and started a new one.  I work for VSP now?

I got to see The Web of Fear, after spending 20 years wishing I could.

We finally planted the Mandarin Tree that's been in a pot for four years.

Let's Recap: 2012

The other night, Chocolate came up as a subject.  Isabel leaned back on the couch and declared "Awbell love chocolate!"

"Daddy love Chocolate too!"

Heidi turned her head, "Mommy loves chocolate three!"

Isabel thought for a moment.

"Awbell chocolate one!"



It's been a big year.  Let's recap.



Emmett!  We had the happiest, smile-iest baby ever.  He's just barely started crawling, but has figured out how to climb the stairs.  He loves adult food, but hates baby food.  Whenever he looks at something, he puts his thumb and forefinger togther and taps it with the tip of his finger.  He doesn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time, ever.

Isabel!  She can talk now, more or less.  She discovered the Transformers, Doctor Who, and Spider-Man. (Or, as she calls them, Trammy-former, Doca WHO!, and Talking Pider-man.  I do not know why spider-man gets that adjective, but wow is it appropriate.)  She got an Electrician's Shirt just like her dad had when he was a kid.  She loves doing "projects."  Her favorite toys include Optimus Prime and a drill.  Take THAT, gender stereotypes.

Heidi!  Discovered Pinterest.  Went ALL-IN on the idea that IKEA is legos for adults.  She has now been pregnant or nursing continuiously for four years straight.  Had a baby surgically removed from her body.

Gabe!  Has a child who loves the Transformers, Doctor Who, and Spider-Man, which means he's accomplished all of his parenting goals.  Quitting eating pork has seen mixed success.  Learning iOS programming also met with mixed success.  Has his hair the longest it's ever been, then cut it off.  He's about to quit his job again, because it's been a few years and that's his career specialty.  (Surprise, anyone from work who knows this blog exists!)



(Also, the mayan post-apocalypse sure looks a lot like the mayan PRE-apocalypse?  What's the next doomsday date?  UNIX time rollover?  I guess we can slack off until 2038.)

Helman, Party of Four!

Second Course

I suppose, one one way, the best description of the last months is the near-total lack of blog updates. Eyeballing the blog archive posts-per-year count tells a story.

For the benefit of readers only getting their news from this outlet, let me skip to the punchline: we're having another baby. Tomorrow.

Looking back, this fact has totally escaped mention on the blog. That neatly sums up what it like to be pregnant and have a 2 year old: no time for blogs.

It's also something of a case study in clichés about second children in general; Isabel got weekly size comparison updates, Number Two gets a single note dashed off while his sister is distracted by brushing her teeth.

I promise this is the last time we won't have as much time for you as we do for her.

The doctor called and moved our c-section from noon to 7:30 am, which means we now have to be at the hospital at 5:30 instead of 10. Thats… kind of a bummer.

It's currently 10:42. In 9 hours, we will have a son.

TWO!

Amazingly, she just turned two.  It's hard to believe, both that it's been that long and that we made it at all.

The Wow Signal

As of this morning, we've got a new word. "Wow".

Currently, she's walking across the dining room pushing her doll stroller (with a banana in it), saying "Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!" Iz, that's how I feel all the time.

It's been two and a half months since the first word. Let's recap.

"No" She's getting a lot of mileage out of this one. Usually she says it all breathy; imagine Marilyn Monroe going "noooooo" with a head shake. But more adorable, and less sexy. Most excitingly, she's learned that saying "no" when you really mean "yes" is funny. As in "Can I put this away?" "Noo!"

"Ma" & "Da" She's settled on one syllable most of the time.

"Bye!" Usually accompanied by a hand wave. Adorably, she pronounces it like "Die!" She's learned to wave at airplanes as they fly overhead, waving and calling out "Die!"

"Hi!" Whenever someone comes into a room or she sees them again. Pronounced more like "Aye!" which gives our house this extra piratanical nautical vibe I'm liking.

"Eye" Proving that the bit of the brain that handles pronunciation is different from the one that resolved homonyms, she's can also identify the eyes.

"Wa Wa", and occasionally, something that sounds a lot like "A wa". Something tells me we're going to be calling water this for the next decade.

"Fooh" I can get behind this - why learn words for different kinds of food? It's all just food.

"Nomah" I have no idea what this means, but she says it ALL THE TIME. It's clearly not a negative, and it's not about her mom, so it's not a constructed word. It's a puzzle.

Yesterday, when she saw something that surprised and delighted her, she said something that sounded exactly like "Oh, Sit!" She felt like she had to sit down to absorb the surprise, maybe?


(Footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal)

I'm calling it: We've got a first word.

"Up".

She likes climbing the stairs. A lot. (Which I don't seem to have a picture of, oddly.)

We've had a variety of meaning-laden syllables crop op over the past few months; "Da da da da" is clearly me, "Ma ma ma ma" is clearly Heidi. "Waa" can mean either she's thirsty or that she wants to go for a walk. (Baby talk has homonyms? Who knew?)

She says "Yeaaa!" a lot, but I suspect that's more a sound of excitement than an affirmative. And a sound that is best spelled as "nnnnoooooo" usually means she's not happy about something.

So - clearly the language centers of the brain are solidifying. She's certainly making sounds that mean things, but they're vague things, and vague sounds. They're just that - sounds - not words.

Until "Up".

This started a week or so ago. The pronunciation is clear - it has two distinct sounds. Both the vowel and the consonant are in there, and the closing "p" sound is firm. One of the recurring aspects of the other near-words Iz uses is that she'll make the first sound of the word with the first mouth shape, and then just trail off. With "Up", not only is she using both letters, but she's reshaping her mouth while she does it.

And it only means one thing: she wants to go upstairs. She's loved climbing the stairs on her own ever since she learned how to crawl, and now she's got a word for it.

"Up." That's the right direction to be moving, Isabel.

My daughter walked over to me when I got home today and gave me a hug.

That was new.

We're thirteen months in. A baker's year. Let's recap.




She started walking about a week ago. She's been taking the occasional cautious side-step for a few weeks, but she really started actually walking about last thursday. She's still a little unsteady on her feet; I'm not sure it's occurred to her that walking is a legitimate replacement for crawling yet. It's still a novel new thing, with no obvious use. She just toddles around the living room for the sake of it, grinning wildly. Toddles. My baby just became a toddler.

She does this thing when she gets crawling really fast where she starts swinging her butt back and forth like a Komodo dragon. I'm going to miss that. I haven't managed to get that on video yet - I think I only have a few days left to try.

She got really sick for the first time last week too. Monday night last week she had a fever, which had basically never happened before. She woke up in good spirits the next morning and it hasn't come back, which makes that the definitive "no news is good news" story. On the other hand, I think she emitted five times her body mass in snot over the weekend. And she barfed up snot five times last night. We're all well rested.

She's also become quite the climber. She climbs everything. All the time. For any reason. If we have to move things in this house much higher up, Heidi won't be able to reach them either.

The hugs are also new. She didn't used to be all that affectionate - now she'll toddle over, throw her hands around your chest and give you a big hug.

My cat died today.

She was old - 19 or 20, I've lost count. Either way, that's about two-thirds of my life. She was a skinny slip of a black cat, more fur and skin than anything else, with almost laughably tiny ears.

We named her Retsil. There's a town off Puget Sound in Washington State called Retsil. The ferry to the town across the water was an adorably small all-black boat. After we got back from Washington twenty years ago, we got an adorably small all-black kitten. The name seemed to fit.

When I was in junior high, she used to climb onto my chest and lick my face until I made her stop. That was the clearest the pores in my nose have ever been.

When she was a kitten, she was practically invisible. She'd vanish for hours at a time. We finally discovered that she was sleeping in the far corner under my dresser, a tiny fuzzball back in the dark.

We had these big pink easy chairs she used to love sleeping on. She'd climb to the top of the back of the chair, and let her forepaws hang down the back of the chair, her chin resting between them.

She was a nervous cat, but a friendly one. She didn't like to hold still, she was always pacing back and forth, back and forth. Petting Retsil was always vaguely comical - she would walk over, you'd pet her head a few times, she'd run to the other side of the room, wait a second, and then trot back. She'd keep that up as long as you were willing.

She started as an indoor-outdoor cat, but at some point moved outside full time, refusing to come back in. We used to feed her on the back balcony. She would carefully climb up a tree to the balcony, eat, and then climb back down again, looking back over he shoulder the whole way. That tree is covered with vertical scratches along its whole trunk.

I always used to worry about her on Halloween - that some wierdo would find a black cat and do something to her. I'd always out on November first as soon as I could to see if she was okay. She always was.

She would never get out of the rain. It would be pouring, and she'd be crouched in the mud under a tree, with water dripping on her head. I always used to build her a house at the start of winter - somewhere dry and out of the wind with her food. She would always stare incredulously at me while I put it together. She'd move in a few nights later.

Finally, she was getting old enough we brought her back inside and didn't let her out again. She moved into what used to be my room. Her favorite spot was just next to the same dresser she used to sleep under. She couldn't fit under it anymore, but she would always sleep right next to the same corner she always used to.

Once, when we brought Isabel over, Retsil came wandering out of her room to see what the fuss was about. She was ancient by cat standards, and old cats and babies never mix well. Isabel was beyond excited - it was all her grandmother could do to keep her contained. Restil padded over to get a closer look at the baby. Isabel's hand shot out towards the cat, a huge grin splitting her face.

"Here it comes," I thought. "One of those two is about to get bitten."

Restil calmly turned her head and let the baby fondle it. Isabel got a fistful of fur, and Restil didn't even twitch. When Isabel was done, Restil quietly padded back to her room.


Thanks, Retsi.

We just took Iz to breakfast!

Super cute is the norm with this gal!

Now that she isn't teething or fighting off a tummy bug, she is as happy as she is adorable.

Sleepy Girl on her way back to Sacramento

Roadtrip to the store! Iz hated it!

HAPPY FATHERS DAY

Roadtrippin!

Back to the scene of the crime. Again.

Shenanigans!

A baby kicking a table is not a screaming baby

Throughout breakfast, Iz slowly scooted her way down across her stroller until her tiny feets could reach the edge of the table. And then she began to kick it with extreme concentration.

Aha, we thought. She's learned to entertain her self quite well! She's happy and content!

So we finished our meal successfully and strolled out to the car, feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

And then discovered that she had dons the single biggest blowout of her entire life to date at the same time. It was everywhere - filled the diaper, all over her clothes, coated the inside of the stroller.

"I'm beginning to learn," Heidi said, "that there is no such thing as 'I brought too many baby clothes.'"

Chico Weekend! Let's recap!

It's our anniversary (two years; woooo!) so we decided to jaunt up to Chico for the weekend. For extra sauce, this is Isabel's first overnight trip away from home.

Let's recap the weekend so far!

Chico: Still here!
Jack's Diner: No longer serves the Party Omlette!
French Bakerty: has become a Starbucks!
Employee Quote at Cafe Mondo (which used to be known as "the scone place": "Um, we've NEVER had scones."
Cafe Mondo Coffee: now undrinkable!
Isabel: peed all over the hotel bed!

So, clearly we're rocking a 5 out of 5 here. But, I gotta make this quick - in 15 minutes this wireless access point is becoming a Starbucks.

Isabel's first restaurant!