Visitors-a-Go-Go

(Nana, PopPop, Lila and Lila's everpresent pocketbook)

Lila spent the week in the devoted care of Nana and PopPop. They strolled about town testing out new eateries, picking up cupcakes, and teaching Lila some new tricks, like making a kissing sound, and opening her mouth in mock shock when you ask her to look surprised. They left town yesterday, and Nana Ann comes in tomorrow. It's all part of the month long celebration of Lila's birth.

Happy First Birthday, Lila Q!

(Lila surveys her birthday carnage)


Lila had a great day. No offense to the Jewish side of the family, but the morning felt a little like Christmas. Oh the gifts! She'll be set till she's a teenager. Above, she is wearing her new sweater vest knitted by Nana. There was also a knitted sweater from Nana Ann with bunnies on it. Such talented nanas!


(Take note of Pop Pop's awesome knicker jammies back behind the birthday frivolty)


Josh took the day off, and in the afternoon, Nana, Pop Pop, Josh and Lila came to visit me at work. When I got home at the end of the day, Lila was finishing dinner. We lit a candle on a cupcake and sang Happy Birthday, and just as she was digging into the frosting, Uncle Thom came through the door - he had a business trip in Santa Barbara and squeezed us in! Lila had a bath to wash the frosting off her nose, and a story from Nana, and then it was off to bed, one wonderful year under her tiny belt.

She is such a joy. What a great year for Mommy and Daddy too.


(A red wagon to push her friends Mr. Bunny Bear, Dolly Madison, Ducky and Lilac Pete around the house)

A girl needs a lovely purse to complement her outfit

Lila’s nanny, Aida, is determined to make Lila a girly-girl. How else to explain our daughter’s newfound love of carrying a purse around everywhere she goes? I came home from work one day to find her clutching it, and nothing would tear it away. Forget a love of Barbies: I worry that next week I will come home to find her with lipstick and breast implants.

Aida has also started putting a barrette in Lila’s hair, which we love not only because it’s cute as hell, but apparently it is the one signifier that make people register that she is a girl. Dresses, pink pants, flowered shirts…none of them seem to stop people from saying, “Isn’t he cute!” We were recently in a furniture store and a saleswoman said, “Oh, he’s adorable. How old is he?” I replied, “Actually, it’s a she, and she’s 11 months.” The woman apologized, and then, to try to salvage a possible lost sale, leaned down to Lila and said, “I’m sorry! Your mother keeps your hair so short that I couldn’t tell!” Did she think that Lila was the one with the wallet? Because it certainly didn’t endear us to her.


(Why do mommy and daddy always take my picture where dangerous cords float in the background?)


As if warming up for a big one-woman show to be delivered on her first birthday on Sept. 21, Lila seems to come up with a new talent every day. She quickly went from crawling to pulling herself up onto every piece of furniture, and she loves to jerkily walk when we hold her up by her hands. She has also started to babble incessantly, but we noticed last week that in the middle of her usual “deedledeedledeedles” and “duggyduggyduggys,” she was saying an actual word: baby. And as opposed to “duggy,” which is uttered with no relation to a doggy, she was using her new word correctly, while pointing to pictures of herself. And then, this morning, after Christine pointed to the duck, hippo, and cat on her pajamas, and we asked, “Where is duckie?” she pointed to the correct animal, and did the same for the other two. It’s enough to make me forgive her other new talent: lifting Daddy’s shirt up, grabbing two fistfuls of chest hair, and yanking.


(Look carefully for the barrette on the right side of Lulu's head)

Don't Take That Picture, Lady!

Lila and I went to the mat over dinner tonight, as she employed a new strategy: attack early and often. It started badly with her appetizer, cheese and crackers - or, more specifically, laughing cow cheese spread on her tiny Elmo-faced organic crackers - which she took one look at and threw on the floor. "Try one," I implored. She licked the cheese off the next one, and threw the cracker on the ground. After that she would only take the cheese off my finger directly into her mouth. But no crackers! Offense was taken!

We moved on to the main course. I freeze little Lila-sized portions of pureed fresh vegetables, so I defrosted some broccoli, some turnips, and I had some sweet potato in the fridge. Mixed them up with some oatmeal (for the iron), milk and flax seed. It's lumpy and kind of ugly to look at, but she usually eats it without complaint. Today, with the first spoonful she was swatting it out of her face, demanding her own spoon, and flicking what she could get in her hands back on me. At one point she couldn't be bothered to eat because she was too busy scraping dinner off her palms to try to get as much broccoli pulp under her fingernails as possible. For the first time when it was all over I didn't clean her up at her chair - I just whisked her straight to the tub and hosed her down from head to foot.

And so she won this battle, but the war wages on.

When I took these pictures, I liked how she looked like a mobster trying to slip out the back of the police station.


("GIMME DAT CAMERA!")



("I SAID NO PICTURES, LADY!")



("OKAY, YA GOT ME.")


And finally, for you photo enthusiasts (that means you, Thom), here's my Nan Goldin homage:


(BUSTED)