A Bit of This & A Bit of That

So much is happening lately and I'm having a hard time keeping up. I seem to remember last spring being the same way. Over the past few weeks work has been demanding. Sometimes I get home after she has gone to sleep. It's so disappointing when this happens. But I love my career, and yes, even my crazy, crazy job!! It drives me nuts sometimes but in that way that your dysfunctional family makes you a little bit crazy but you still love them.

Meanwhile, here's a little taste of what's going on in our world:

The biggest news is that Ada started crawling!! Like, real, honest-to-God crawling. One day she was in position and then a few days later she was scooting along, then came the frog-phase, and now she is engaged in an organized crawl.  It makes me laugh about these baby books that leave a blank to be filled in with the date that a certain thing or behavior emerged. Maybe it's just our experience, but everything has been such a process that it seems impossible to pin it down to a single day.





Ada has two new teeth. We've been waiting for these little buggars to make an appearance. They've been threatening for weeks now! She is so much happier now that these teeth are finally through.  She is making so much sound now: "dadadada" and "eeee" and "ooooohh". Sometimes it sounds like she says actual words like "hey" and I could have sworn the other night I heard her say "I love you Daddy" after he made her do this:




Oh God, my heart might burst with joy and love for this person, my daughter! Every single day I am so thankful for her. You might think that this would wear off but it never does. In fact, every day the feeling of being so lucky just grows. She only has one Mom and I get to be hers! Man, I hit the jackpot!

We sprung for a backpack this weekend. Yup. We've been a baby-carrying family for a while now and while we may not do it with as much fervor as a family who strongly believes in attachment parenting it's OK because we found a balance that works for us. Tim has been taking Ada for hikes on Sunday while I'm working. They've been using the Ergo, which is great, but not so comfortable for long hikes. Besides, she wants to see around her now and the Ergo is not so great for that.  Tim took her to Alpine Lake today. One thing I LOVE about my man is that he has the guts to do stuff like this. I'm too cautious so I think this provides a nice balance for Ada. Check it out, a practice pic in the living room and then next to Alpine lake. My little hiker. My little nature-lover. My sweet little baby girl.

When we came home from swimming and getting the new kid pack we were greeted by protesters. We live 4 doors down from the mayor. SF being what it is, there is always someone bitching aloud about something. Count on it. This time it was the new sit-lie law, which is the only reason I've returned to the upper Haight. So funny- after we pulled up in our piece-of-crap 1999 Pontiac Grand Am (that was hit by a fake cable car while parallel parked on our street and still bears the scar) I was called an elitist by one of the protesters. Uh, this dude was clearly not paying a damn bit of attention. For a law abiding citizen like me, this is exciting as there were like 6 police cruisers along our little block keeping the peace. Here's a picture from my front porch:

Dad and Rob came for a visit on Saturday afternoon. We went for more swinging in the park. Tim was on call so no going out for us. Managing the car and carseat situation is too daunting. So instead we got takeout from Nopalito. So delicious. I made another practice cake for Ada's birthday. There is a good reason to practice. Even with Rob's help (the woman can bake!) I managed to mess up a couple of key details. I'll post a picture when Ada's birthday comes and I've perfected the cake...

Fun times!! Life is so good...

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.