A Trip to the Park.

I like the park.

I like to go to the park with Aida, or mommy, or daddy. It doesn't matter, really, as long as they bring a pail and a shovel, and have raisins for me for the ride home.

I start with the swing.




I like the swing.




I like a hard push, but I also like gentle swaying.




I can swing for a long time.




I only stop when someone has had enough of pushing.




Then, I am ready to move to the sand.




Props are helpful.




Pouring is interesting.




Here's something: bigger things pour more.




When I get home, sand pours out of my shoes, my socks, my pant cuffs, and my diaper. C'est la vie, I say.




Then, I like to be airlifted into the rocking whale. It rocks. I make a fish sound, because although a whale is not technically a fish, it sure looks like one to me.




And then I am ready for my nap.




Take me home please. And don't forget my raisins.

Visitors from Far Away

(Hi everyone!)

We just had a lovely visit from Nana and Pop Pop, who doted on Lila, ferried her about, bent to her whims (within reason, of course) and taught her all sorts of new things, like where her wrist is and how to ride a rocking horse.

In the morning, if Lila was up first, she would stand outside Nana and Pop Pop's door with a book, waiting for them to come out and read it to her. And the night they left when I was getting her into her jammies, she kept pointing towards the door and saying "PopPopPopPopPop".

It's nice to see that even when we go a month or two (sometimes longer) without seeing her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, she does get into a groove with everybody rather quickly on visits. Still, we miss our families. Living on the West Coast tends to be quite agreeable until the East Coast relatives (and friends) visit, and then we can't figure out why we live so far away.

We miss you all!

Lila's family

Still very busy at work, but here are some more Aunt Puck/Uncle Thom pix.


(Hanging with Uncle Thom)



("Lila, can you say 'narcolepsy'?)



(Lots to learn)



(Aunt Puck & Lulu)



("Trot Trot to Boston" with Popsie)



(Hanging with Daddy)



(Chinese Checkers with Nana Ann)

These light-up shoes were made for walking.

Lila likes to be ready to go out.

She sometimes gets up in the morning and insists that we put her brown corduroy jacket on her, and her sneakers (over the feetie pajamas), just so that she can be ready to go out as soon as the time comes. She moves around the house looking like she's in a waiting room.




Nana and Pop Pop are in town, which makes things extra fun for Lila. Lots of attention. They say she's been very well behaved and are impressed - as we all are - with her concentration skills.




She also seems to be getting very attached to things - like her blanky and her "friends" -all her stuffed animals. There's a lot of kissing going on. She's been going to a new class with Aida and Aida reports that there are puppets, which Lila is intrigued by. I asked her if Lila tried to kiss and hug the puppets and she says, "that's ALL she does for the whole class!"

Very busy at work - sorry not a lot of time to post!

This one's a shout-out to Nana Ann

Nana Ann left almost 2 weeks ago for India, and won't be back till February 21st. Luckily, we are getting sporadic updates, but it's just not the same as having her around to call and tell her about Lila's random accomplishments.

Knowing she is somewhere in Delhi, dressed in a sari, occasionally getting on the web, here are some of those random developments we would be inclined to share were a phonecall an option:


(Sneakers and jammies)


"Hi" has left her daily vernacular, and has quickly been replaced by "Da", which means just about anything, and everything. We spend time going through her toy box, where she picks up one thing at a time, hands it to you, and says, "Da?" And you tell her what it is, and she moves on to the next thing with "Da?"

Or else she points to things and says, "Da" or, alternately, "Da?" Sometimes, even, "Da!"


("Da?")


I'm not sure how many words she has, because so many come and go. She said "hat" today where she would normally just say "da", but it was only after I said it and I don't think she retained it. "Belly" is her old standby, and others that she seems to know and go to are "Daddy" (but not "Mommy"!), "doggy", "duck", "bye-bye", "cheese" (as in pose for a picture, not the dairy product), "peas" and "baby". She also has many, many animal sounds, though not always accurate.


("Cheese!")


Embracing another one of my genetic predispositions, Lila is profoundly pigeon-toed (new nickname: Pigeon-toed Pete). She still walks a bit like a drunken, gay sailor, belly thrust out, toes pointed in, arms akimbo. I tried to tell myself that maybe all kids are pigeon-toed, but we spent time with her friend Avery today, who is to a duck what Lila is to a pigeon.

For now, it's cute.

We miss you, Nana Ann!

Holidays Redux

Aunt Puck emailed a goldmine of photos from our time in Vermont over New Years, and I think this series above might be my favorite.

Lila was very taken with the oragami mobile we made a few years ago for the annual New Years Eve craft project. We had a book of oragami and we spent the day making as many of the designs as possible, culminating in an elaborate star that was actually a bunch of individual stars melded together into one. Then Catherine (aka Aunt Puck) made them all into a mobile.

What I like about these pictures is that they capture a familiar, almost mundane moment of discovery. It happens so much with a toddler, I forget how extraordinary it is.

More pictures from the Thom/Catherine collection to follow.

Spoon progress

It may be hard to tell from this photo, but Lila continues to progress with the use of a spoon. Now she uses the correct end, which is just slightly more efficient than her previous pattern of dipping the metal end into her applesauce and licking it. Now she gets more of it with the spoon, but she holds the cup on the rim and frequently lets it tip over. Then she loves - LOVES - to slosh it all around on her tray and rub it into her ears.

Check out the yolk of applesauce around the edge of her bib. That comes out nicely in her hair when you take it off.

Not that I care...

...But I decided to stop worrying about Lila's sleep and she promptly had a 2 hour nap yesterday.

Does this look like a tired baby?

Lila is not sleeping during the day and it's driving us crazy.

She goes down at 7:30 for the night and sleeps through like a dream to at least 7 AM, sometimes later. She has recently ceased to tolerate her 2 naps a day (which is pretty much right on schedule), but that one mid-day nap should be at least an hour a half, ideally 2 hours or more. Every day it barely makes it to an hour, and by 5 PM the circles under her eyes are so dark, she looks like we're raising her in the basement. We've tinkered with everything - letting her cry, feeding her before, feeding her after...nothing works.

She's never been a very good daytime sleeper, but she would always get to a point of collapse, and sleep like a log for a few days. But we can't seem to get to that point at the moment.

I'll take any suggestions.

Happy mid-January?

12 days past new years and still I plan to send out a New Years card with Lila's picture on it. It started out as a holiday card - don't they all? - and as the holiday actually approached, I switched it out with a New Years card. And I ordered some test copies, I created the photo above...but I couldn't make a decision and now my ideas have shifted on to new plans, new pictures, new cards.

This weekend. This weekend it will get done!

Holiday Highlights Part 2: Cousins Galore

One leg of our trip was a two day layover in the Berkshires, where Josh's sister's family recently completed construction on a lakefront summer home. It was our first visit, and though the contstruction process was long and fraught with problems, check out the tremendous view from the living room out these 2 stories of windows. It's an incredible home.

Lila, however, was more interested in the view of her cousins.

Moving around her in a constant pod of girlish energy, Julia, Abby, Rachel and Lily kept Lila entertained with their big-girl knowledge, not to mention an extensive toy collection. Lila met her first Barbie Doll, which was a big hit. It turns out Barbie has been hanging out with a new crowd, and her pals look more like the kids in high school who cut class and made out behind the cafeteria rather than the ones who got their homework in on time and joined the glee club. But the former were the kids that had all the fun, anyway, so maybe Barbie is just getting more verite.

Here are a few shots of the girls:


(Lila plays with Julia's doll. Girls watch.)



(Lila couldn't bear to sleep away any moments with the girls so every now and then we'd catch her taking a breather with blanky.)



(What every 15 month old needs to know: How to use a Gameboy, as instructed by Rachel & Julia)



(Do they think she's getting the hang of it?)



(Funny!)



(Another respite)



(Lulu and Abby)

Holiday Highlights, Part 1

On paper, it may have seemed like a bad trip. An emergency landing in Rochester, New York, crappy weather, lots of driving, too-brief visits, Josh's visit to the emergency room after his back went out...but really, we had a great time. The big news is that Lila is walking. Nana Ann was waiting for her to arrive at her house on the 23rd of December practically holding a new pair of sneakers that light up when you step; we put them on her little feet and as soon as she saw how they worked, she resigned from crawling for good.

Uncle Thom and Aunt Catherine took such good pictures that we undercovered the visit with our own camera. Hopefully we'll be getting some of theirs to post. But here are some highlights:


(Hanging out with Pop Pop)



(Chris, Lulu and Bubbe)



(Long walks in the cold with Nana Ann)



(Cold but happy)



(Getting the hang of opening presents)



(A vacuum cleaner from Nana Ann)



(A musical Sesame Street toy from Aunt Catherine and Uncle Thom)



(Christmas Dinner party dress)



(Nana comes for Christmas Dinner)