Baltimore Pics

1. Profile of Thisbe and turtle.
2. Family fun at the aquarium.
3. With Popo.
4. Nora, Thiz, and the cell phone.
5. A totally un-posed family photo.
6. Grandpa and his granddaughters.
7. Helping Grandma Gail and Kaarn with the computer.
8. Shopping at Ikea.

Valpo Pics

1. Grandma Dorothy finds a masterful way to keep you content while toning her hamstrings.
2. Reading with G-Pa Mark.
3. Stockings hung with serious care.
4. Auntie Martha and Auntie Anna take you sledding.
5. Cookie dough cookie love.

Actually, Anyway, Also

OK, OK, I've been a horrible blog post-person as of late. This is in part due to our busy-ness but mostly due to the fact that I'm trying to do some of my very own writing right now and sometimes I don't have time for both.

Actually, that's a lie. Sometimes I don't feel like writing in the blog in the evening, when I could, and instead of documenting the awe-inspiring, hilarious, touching moments of your growing up I instead watch Damages, a show in which Glenn Close wears a formidable number of button down shirts and manipulates everyone within spitting distance.

Anyway, here are some things that happened:

Mommy and Daddy went away for our very first 48 hour getaway. Here, "getaway" refers to "getaway" from you. Don't worry, I called at least six times during the 48 hour period. Daddy and I went to Lutsen where we skied and sat by a real fire and sat by a gas fire and ate prime rib and played Hand and Foot and almost crashed into a snow plow and saw a wolf eating a deer carcass and slid down the Lutsen parking lot hill six times backward and drank Choco Vine (which your father pronounces "Coco Vin" in a very deep throaty way) and read books and "slept" and slept. On the way to Lutsen we stopped at the GAP outlet and on the way home your father explained the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to me which pretty much sums up the way we roll.

You have started sleeping in a good true awesome way. Generally this means to bed at 6:30pm, a half-hearted wake-up at 6:15am and a full true wake up at 7:00am. In the afternoon you still only sleep for around an hour but sometimes even longer. Awesomeness.

Also, you are developing this lovely sense of empathy that completely and totally breaks my heart. A few weeks ago at playdate, Trish went out to move her Subaru so that we could move our car and while she was gone, Anna became exceptionally sad (which makes sense, her mom was driving off without her in the Subaru) and as she wept at the window you went over to her, without prompting, and rested your hand on her shoulder. In Baltimore, Grandma Gail wasn't feeling particularly well and so spent a lot of time on the couch, resting. You spent a lot of time standing at the head of the couch and trying to engage her in various kinds of play. I know I spend a lot of time venting and complaining on this blog and so I will take a moment to be entirely cheezy and say that when I see this unprompted compassion in you I am just floored. It is this true sense of kindness that comes unbidden from nowhere and gives me hope for our majorly messed up world.

On to other random thoughts--

Our trip to Baltimore was very fun. We went to the aquarium and payed $24 so you could ride the escalators. We went to an Italian restaurant and laughed while Nora chased you (and Aunt Meghan's expensive phone which you happened to be holding) around the empty tables.

This has, by the way, become one of your favorite habits: running in circles. You ran in circles around Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael's kitchen island with a bucket on your head and you ran circles through Meghan and Nels and Nora's house (at the end of a 3-hour play date) while Nora sat calmly and sweetly on the couch with Nels.

In addition to running circles, you are starting to speak more. Yesterday, as you and I went up and down endless staircases at St. Olaf, you said "stairs" over and over again. "Up" and "down" are also favorites now due to a fairly annoying Elmo video. You still don't say "Mama" much unless prompted. Mostly you makes "s" sounds that vaguely resemble words.

Also, it was -29 when we woke up yesterday morning. Without the wind. We learned, via an informative youtube video, that if you toss a cup of boiling water into -29 degree air it will immediately turn into a cloud.

And there is so much more that I could report--and in a much more articulate and organized way but--oh well.

I put your hair in pigtails for the first time the other day. You looked so grown up that I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it again.

Baby Jesus Made Some Noise

We're going cold turkey on your ass. Lots of lovely things happened in the last few weeks, but unfortunately, much of the loveliness was overwhelmed (for me) by a poorly waged battle against your incongruous sleeping habits.

We didn't feel comfortable letting you cry it out when we were with relatives so instead we relied on singing, humming, shushing, rubbing your back, and finally letting you collapse upon us (me) in our bed so that we could all get a few precious hours of sleep between the hours of 5 and 7am. But every nap, every bedtime, someone had to put you down--and here I purposefully use the terminology of pet death since sometimes we came close to desiring to do the same to you. Because sometimes you simply wouldn't go to sleep. On Christmas Eve, for example. The table was spread with a festive tablecloth, with an advent wreath, with candles and silver and scarlet once-a-year-napkins. The china with blushing pears and a delicate rim of gold (or something like gold). Grandma Dorothy made shrimp risotto. A salad with pears and gorgonzola cheese and candied walnuts. There was wine. Manhattans. Orange martinis. It was time to feast! But I was upstairs with you. Because you wouldn't go to sleep. And I could have come downstairs but I wouldn't have been able to taste the food--my taste buds cease to function when you start to sob. So I fumed and you stayed awake and I fumed.

This is not your fault really. It is ours too. You had some legitimate sleeping issues just before the holidays but we feared that we couldn't go cold turkey during our holidays and so we coddled instead. And really, that was probably best.

Because last night you cried for 90 minutes straight before falling asleep. I put you down today for your nap at 12:30pm. It is 2:48pm and according to your father, you are still crying. That's 138 minutes. I am at Blue Monday writing and drinking a latte and this is what makes it possible for me to love you still.

Now that I've finished venting, I have no energy to talk about all the lovely blessedness of the season (such as sled rides with aunts and slinky-time with uncles, a new found adoration of skyways, your very first sugar high, your New Year's stay-awake coup, your "yes" and "juice," your penchant for Bonhoeffer, countless rides on the moving walkways at the airport, cookies fed to you on the sly by lovely grandmas, books read ad nauseum by patient grandpas, mad skilz with plastic blocks, etc, etc, etc.)

At church today, where I was miraculously able to listen to the sermon because (praise be to Jesus) you were in the nursery, Pastor Charlie talked about how Christmas is about getting, not about giving. It's the moment when we receive God, in the flesh, in the guise of this tiny infant. God interrupts our space, said Pastor Charlie, God wails his way right into us. This would have been good for me to remember a week ago--that God didn't come down quietly in the middle of a lovely dinner--God is in the voice that won't let us sleep, that calls on us to look to the cores of our very beings for patience and gratitude and love.

I love you, dear girl, you and your stupendous will.

Effects

Rather than detailing your behavior, I shall instead list here the effects of your behavior and let you guess about the causes.

1. It is 7:30 and Mommy is on glass #2 of wine.

2. At 5:15pm you were in your highchair, facing toward the T.V. instead of the dinner table, eating cheesy noodles and watching a PBS cartoon show called Word Girl while Daddy and I mindlessly stuffed bad Chinese food into our faces.

3. At 5:30pm I gave you a fortune cookie. At 5:32 I realized that the fortune itself had disappeared. At 5:33 I realized I didn't care and actually had a vague hope that perhaps ingesting the fortune directly might permit a small bit of wisdom to enter your bloodstream.

4. This afternoon, I sat on the couch crying with the vacuum on beside me and my fingers plugging my ears to drown out the sound of you screeching.

5. Intermittently, I considered exactly how long you might last if I placed you snugly in a snow bank. Then I thought about jail and how much time I would have to read books in my cell.

6. I have spent the last twenty minutes googling things such as "sleep disturbance fifteen months," "night waking toddler," and "why won't my child fucking go to sleep." Varying levels of success.

7. I found washing lemon sauce and deep fried chicken bits off our dinner plates to be relaxing and luxurious.

8. I prayed for patience.

Cutlery

One of the oddest things about life with you is that some things that I never would have previously thought would be a battle are indeed a battle. Things such as: getting you to sit in a car seat or stroller, putting on your coat, changing your diaper, getting you out of the bathtub, peeling apples in the kitchen without you throwing a hissy fit. All of these things are, continuously, battles of epic proportions.

Conversely, things I would previously have thought might require training or coaxing or wrestling moves turn out to be pretty easy. Case in point: eating with cutlery.

One day, about two weeks ago, you simply decided that spoons and forks were the way to go. Now, if we put spoonable or forkable food on your highchair tray WITHOUT a bowl, fork and spoon to accompany said food item, you simply will not eat it. You are not, after all, a barbarian. You have a refined sense of class. That's why you like to scrape the wax off of candles with your teeth.

Nausea

It's been a week of nausea. Your lovely outbreak of sickness was followed by sickness for Grandma (Monday), Mama (Tuesday), and Dada (Wednesday). Luckily, all of us weren't sick at the same time. Thus, GM Ricki, GP Peter, and GD Xena were all able to come down on Wednesday (and GM again on Thursday) to offer some much needed help.

You have mostly been a clingy and whiny stinkbug. Today I had you in the morning. And we had no plans. And, though I love you, five hours without the respite of a nap when you only want to be held ALL THE TIME is kind of a recipe for Homicidal Mama. In order to defend against my growing homicidal tendencies, I brought you up to St. Olaf so that you could run around, see Daddy, pet the Christmas trees, get roasty (I mean, toasty) by the fire, etc. You refused to walk on your own. It's possible we were playing "polio epidemic" or "fun with landmines" and that's why you wanted me to carry you--but if so, you need to be clearer about the kind of imaginative outcomes you're hoping for.

Last night, however, you broke out a whole bunch of adorable. When we Skyped with GM Gail and GP Michael, you walked in front of the computer screen (and camera) and delivered--literally--a five minute lecture to them complete with finger shaking, head nods, and a flurry of hand waves. Behind you, Daddy and I were convulsing with laughter.

You have learned to blow kisses and, admittedly, that's pretty fucking cute.

Though the stomach bug has passed through our house, my nausea continues. There are many things up in the air right now, many decisions that will be made by others or by us in the upcoming weeks that could have some big effects on our lives. And yes, I'm being purposefully vague. The point is just that it is possible that you're being a miserable witch because I'm kind of a miserable witch right now too. "It seems like you have trouble living with ambiguity," said your father to your mother during their very first phone conversation. This made Mommy think that Daddy was an asshole and prompted a vow never to talk to him again. But it *may* be possible that he was a *tiny* bit right. I have trouble living with ambiguity and you have trouble with me when I'm having trouble with anything.

Oh well, I'm sure the single digit temps and impending snow storm will have us all in better moods in a jiffy.

At least I don't have trouble living with sarcasm.