first aid kit

Little Reader

I mentioned a few posts back that I had a new obsession. Well, I do, it's true.

As you may know, Tim and I are a couple of nerds. While most people might bring their little girl home in a carefully chosen outfit with pink flowers and frills we opted for the 'nerdling' onesie we  found while Christmas shopping.

 I laugh when I see this picture now - how we didn't have a clue what we were doing. Look at that naked head! And it's directly on the carpet! And the bare newborn twiggly legs!

She had her first library card before she was 10 weeks old.

Early on as a tiny infant I read to her from Barbara Walters autobiography (she is a woman worth emulating, in my humble opinion) and Moira read her the Wall Street Journal. Can you see where this is headed?

We have provided her with board books from very early on and she has had an age appropriate response to them (picks them up, bangs them together, chews on them, flips through the pages.

A couple of months ago Ada found my picture books from my childhood on the bookshelf on her own. She pulled book after book off the shelf and put them in her mouth and opened the hard backs and gazed in wonder at the illustrations on the pages. I watched her and imagined her as a toddler. I fantasized about her bringing books to us to read while snuggling  in bed, much like we do now. 

In a moment it occurred to me to begin a library for her. It wasn't easy to know where to start. I took Kiddie Lit as a senior in college and dropped it. I couldn't connect with spending weeks in deep analysis of Where the Wild Things Are! I polled a few key sources for the stories she simply shouldn't escape childhood without reading. I cashed in some gift certificates that I had been holding on to. I like to do that - wait for the perfect item, then use my gift certificate for it and follow it up with a message to the giftee about how much I'm enjoying the thing I got. Yesterday, while we were down in the Haight running some errands, we popped in to the Goodwill. There were surprisingly some great finds - the book section there is well-stocked. We walked out with 5 great like-new books for under 8 clams.

Her collection swelled quickly and now we are just in a pattern where we will add to it more slowly. I have a newly discovered love for children's literature. The books on the shelf now are all great and in my little fantasy she will want to keep these books forever. I even got her some bookplates from Silly Goose.

When she is old enough for it I plan on mounting a couple of THESE so that she can access her books more easily. I also found a site called The Story Home where you can get Podcasts of stories being read aloud. I'm not trying to pressure her but I am trying to capitalize on this most impressionable period in her life - a love of learning and reading will always serve well. Sparking her imagination with stories is fertilizer to her young mind.

Those Women in the Park

You know, the ones sitting on a bench on an urban children's playground? Their sunglasses on, hands on their strollers effortlessly moving them back and forth to soothe a fussing baby, carelessly laughing as they chat with friends on a sunny mid-week afternoon? I always wondered to myself about these women. Who are they? How can they afford to not work? What do they do all day?

Well, now I can answer these questions for myself because yesterday I became one of these women. And we do both work. Courtnay is still on maternity leave and I had a day off after my typical 48-hour work week. What do we do all day? Well, on this day we decided to seize the day and squeeze every bit of life out of it that we could! And it was a beautiful day...

Cole is 4 weeks old and adorable. It's funny to look at him and know not very long ago Ada was that small! And not very long from now Cole will be as big as Ada is now! Being around a newborn just makes me lose my mind - it take all of my self control to not grab and smother with love. This is a new phenomenon given that I haven't traditionally been a big lover of children. These days it's as if a light switch was flipped on so that when I see other babies I see Ada in all of them. It makes me just love them.

Oh newborn!! With the gripping little hands, curly twig legs, dark eyes, smiles while sleeping, the tender cries and gummy mouth.

Yes, I'll take another, please!! 

I love hanging out with Courtnay - she's funny, smart, and has that sarcastic sense of humor that I so love in a friend. Irony is not lost on this girl! After she and Cole had gone yesterday I reflected on how different it is getting to know someone over the background noise of infants. Barely a conversation gets finished, truly, and the worst part: I feel like you can never be 100% focused on the words the other person is telling you. And I really want to hear! Rather, you are listening as well as you can AND plucking a wrapper out of a mouth, or retrieving a pail and shovel, or moving a hot double latte farther away from curious little grabbing hands...

Ada slept through most of the park incident but woke up in time to enjoy a brief spin on the swings. She loves the swing. I love my girl. We both love the BOB. I mean L-O-V-E!

This kid cracks me up!! I love her cheeks, her wispy hair, her little bow-shaped lips....but when she sleeps she has a tendency to purse them out and squish her face down so that she looks like a mini Winston Churchill. Mind if I zoom in for a laugh?

God, she gets me every time!!


In other news, I embarked on a little project where I turned these:

into these:

using this tutorial and all for about 1/5 the cost of these. Sweet! Now my little lovebug can wear all her adorable spring dresses AND not freeze her chunky little thighs in the mild San Francisco weather.


A closing thought: we're phasing out the exersaucer. It's really only good for using to prop herself up now and most of the time serves as a toy storage device in the front room. It's currently heaped with toys, a quilt, the bottle she didn't finish, 2 books, and 3 burp cloths. Sheesh.

Time. It goes so fast.

The inner-critic. Pick pick, pick...

Last night, it hit me hard:       I am a role model.

Wow.

And… Holy Shit.


Ada is watching every single thing I do. And her scrutiny is only going to get more intense. I lay in the bed for almost an hour thinking about the implications of this. Because that is what I do – I over analyze everything. Back-and-forth. Perseverate. Restlessly fret. Pick, pick, pick…It’s just my way, never to change, I suppose. “Do I want her to experience me doing this?” I wondered in the dark. I am afraid to show her, this among other terrible behaviors, lest she thinks that imitating them is good.

Then it started. The floodgates opened and the litany of in-my-own-head criticism over personal flaws came pouring out unexpected, uninvited, and unwelcome. Ooh, and that voice in my head is meeeeean. It echos every negative comment I’ve ever heard and it comes up with brand new ones. My Mom always told me, “You are your own worst critic.” As far as I can tell, she was right.

Maybe we don’t all do this – have this biting internal dialogue late at night, but I think most of us have let our inner-critic fly out of control at least once. No? Then, just as that voice was really catching some wind, I realized that somehow I have to teach Ada all about self-love and confidence. Can I be myself while still minding my own behavior? Is it hopeless?

I drifted off to sleep ratcheting these thoughts around. Somewhere in the night I did what I always somehow manage to do: I rallied. By the light of the morning and the coffee steaming up from my cup I had re-established my precarious, slippery grip on the life-raft of optimism. But after that brief visit from my own “dark traveler” my awareness remains. I just have to figure out what to do with it and I haven’t put my finger on it yet. Becoming the woman I hope my daughter will want to grow up to be like has to be an organic process. I just hope it all unfolds in time for her to benefit. I suppose that awareness of your hearts desire is the first step in creating it.
Feel free to comment, please. I'd love to know what you think about this.