You've Got Mail!

I've always loved getting mail. Personal mail, not junk mail, although at one point, before the advent of internets and all of its' online shopping glory, even junk mail in the form of catalogs etc was welcome in my house.

I remember writing letters to my Avó and erupting with glee whenever a postcard found its way to my home. I was fascinated by the little pieces of cardboard and all that they'd been through in order to reach me. When I started traveling myself, I always made sure to send cards to my friends and family from wherever I was traveling.

So when I first heard about Postcrossing, it seemed like an ideal fit. Postcrossing is a great site set up by a couple of fun Portuguese folks to facilitate the exchange of postcards amongst like minded peeps around the world. It's been a very rewarding experience and I've even become pen pals with a few of the dozens of people who've either sent me cards or whom I've sent cards to. If you like postcards/getting real mail in your postbox, I highly recommend it. Plus it's free! Well, you have to pay for the postage on the cards you send of course, and buy some cards to send out. But you could also use old cards you've picked up but never had the chance to mail :o)

But before Baby F. was born and definitely before I joined Postcrossing, I had thought that it would be great to get some postcards for her. I've mentioned it briefly before - I asked our friends and family to send her a card either from where they lived or of something they really enjoyed, as well as a short note to her on the back. She ended up receiving 20 or so cards which I then displayed in a photo holder in her room. I also went ahead and laminated all of them, so she could play with them *and* they'd survive her infancy.

Here are some highlights from her collection:

All the way from where else, the wondrous islands of the Azores, from our cousin A.

A vonK from New York State

Couldn't resist including this adorable drawing by our dear friend A vonK, on the back of the ESB card :o)

A building dear to my heart - i once worked there - from Baby F.'s godmama

K. and N.'s current city, Hoboken

Adorable doggie with I assume cute text in Japanese :o) from L.

Always a fave, Klimt from P.

Cutest bear in all of Madrid from C.

Loneliest pigeon in NYC from S.

Beautiful Van Gogh from A. in Portugal

Horseys! From Wyoming! From dear friends K. & J.

...is all you need :o) From S. in Queens

...Is it me you're looking for? Yes :o) From S. in NYC

I'm hoping that in a few years, when she's just a little older, we'll look at all of these and she'll realize how much she was loved even before she was born. I also hope they'll inspire her to dream of exploring far off places and to want to learn about all sorts of things.

Television…the drug of the (toddler) nation

Before Baby F. ever came along, I had certain ideas of what I'd do in regards to her television watching.

Outdoor Antenna of the kind we didn't have ;o)

We didn't want to be too severe - both Papa-in-Training and moi had been reared on telly and didn't feel it had ruined or stunted us. But then again, I'd grown up in Portugal up until I was 11 when there were only two channels to watch…and only one if you didn't have an outdoors antenna, i.e. you didn't want to pay the tv license by advertising to the authorities that you had a telly. Shh! Don't tell the tv license people, they might still want to collect after 30+ years ;o)

So we thought we'd let her watch some television when she was a little older - maybe 2 or
3 - but until then, we'd try to keep her away from the boob tube.


Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

[let me regain my breath a bit]


Yeah, that completely went out the window soon after birth.
All the guidelines, all the best practices, are great for ideal situations, when baby is always entertaining herself or there's always someone else around to help take care of her.
But what if there isn't? What if your brain has turned to mush and you'd like to watch some tv yourself but the baby is still awake?
Well, then you watch anyway, 'cause they can barely see beyond their face at the beginning. So you and your partner get a chance to relax and spend some bonding time with the baby because really she's not even aware that there's some sort of magical object that emits pictures and sounds at this point.

But once she can see and hear better, then surely no tv?

Yeah, phtttfff!

We were really good at first. Maybe she'd watch a little Jeopardy with me in the evenings, maybe a little Big Bang Theory - Baby F. seemed to like Sheldon in particular - but that was about it.

But then we discovered PBS. Well, *we* didn't discover it. I mean, I've been a devoted fan for many years. I was watching Masterpiece on a weekly basis waaaay before Downton Abbey came along and made it all chichi for everyone in the nation to watch ;o)

More specifically, we discovered Curious George. And that, my friends, was the beginning of the end.
Well, that and a certain bunch of squirrels headed by Bana & Flapi…but more on that a bit later.

Back to the monkey…

We discovered George and soon we were watching him and his friends on and off PBS. We have Netflix and they have all the available episodes on demand! This is at once an amazing thing…and a dreadful thing.
Because Baby F. now knows we can bring up an episode whenever we'd like.

And so every morning,

Said pillow complete with built in cat hair for a more authentic touch.

after having her brekkie and while I'm usually still waking up (some days I'm still half asleep honestly), I will put on the next episode of Curious George and Baby F. will sit in front of me on the couch - in between my legs (it's a deep couch) - or next to me on my left, using her favorite couch pillow, and will suddenly erupt in pure glee at the playing of the first notes of the theme song. She will do a little dance of joy while sitting next to me and will follow along with all the crazy adventures our little monkey friend gets up to.

Sometimes we might watch an episode of Sesame Street afterwards, where no big surprise, she seems to like Elmo's World the best, but it doesn't quite have the hold that George has on her.

We've tried other shows - Bob, the Builder; Thomas, the Tank Engine; Babar; Pocoyo - and although she might like them a bit, they do not envoke the joy that the curious monkey gives her.

That is, other than Bana & Flapi.

What the heck is that, you may be asking?

Only the most amazing cartoon about squirrels ever devised :o)



I watched this sweet little show when I was a child and fell hook, line and acorn over its' protagonist and his forest adventures. There were no VCRs when I was little, so when a few years back they decide to release the series on DVD, I was utterly thrilled. Unfortunately I
was only able to pick up a couple of the volumes, leaving me with lotsmissing in between. This wasn't that much of a big deal…until we discovered that the DVDs are magic.

Once upon a time, we were having a hard time getting Baby F. to eat. And then one of us, I forget who, thought, 'Why don't we pop in a DVD and see if that will distract her enough to eat?' And so, with this thought we doomed ourselves to repeated viewings of the same episodes of the little squirrel.





And before you mamas and papas get up in arms, yes, yes, babies should be fed without distractions, yada yada yada. But you know what? These little squirrels got her to eat her nom noms almost every time. Because unlike with other programs that we might have on that she'll barely glance at whilst playing next to us, Bana & Flapi thrills her to no end. She actually pumped her fist in the air today as we told her it was time for lunch *and* for Bana & Flapi. She, of the as of yet, limited vocabulary, said 'Yay!' and pumped up her fist.

She also makes the kookiest facial expressions while watching particularly thrilling episodes - spoiler alert: there's a scary one involving a ferret.

Have I sometimes been singing a certain ditty in my head only to realize I'm singing the Curious George theme song?
Am I growing slightly annoyed at my childhood favorite's theme song playing everyday at meals?
Do I find the repetition of the handful of episodes we own being droned into my brain day after day unsettling?

Maybe a little.

But seeing the fun and happiness Baby F. has while watching Curious George and Bana & Flapi makes it all worthwhile.

No Barney though. That's where I draw the line.


P.S. I have recently found that seemingly all episodes of Bana & Flapi are available through YouTube. For some reason they've all been divided up into two parts each, but that's a small price to pay for my sanity and that of Papa-in-Training's :D

P.P.S. Sadly, I'm unaware of any English dubbing of Bana & Flapi. The original was in German and it also aired in Spain and Italy, I believe, but never in any English speaking country :o(

Planes, Trains and Automobiles - Part I

We started planning our spring vacation earlier this year. We were heading to Portugal to see my family for 15 days, sponsored by the US government (in the form of a healthy tax refund) and by my parents' generosity.

There was a lot to plan out since a trip to the homeland for me isn't as simple as picking a beach and there staying for the duration. I have relatives in various places and a visit to each must be made since we only see each other every couple of years. Plus this time little F. would be coming along to meet everyone for the first time.

Logistics had to be figured out so that no one felt left out and yet the three of us still managed to have a good holiday and not one of those 'if-its-Belgium-it-must-be-Tuesday' types.

I figured out that we could stay 5 days in each locale. Five days in Estarreja, the town with the nearest decent hotel to our relatives in Murtosa and Salreu; five days in São Gião, a small idyllic mountain village where my father hails from and where my Avó still lives;  and then five days in Tábua, a large town where my Tia lives with her family.

But of course in between these mini-stays, there would be travel from one place to another, as well as day-trips and the seeing of friends. Phew! Getting tired just remembering it.

All of this would be fatiguing enough if it was just moi and Papa-in-Training, but we also had Baby F. with us. We'd never traveled farther than a little north of NYC with her, so we were understandably apprehensive about how she'd do with both the long-distance train and car travel as well as the biggie: transatlantic flights.

Gah!

Maybe we should put it off for a couple more years. Then she'd be a bit older and better able to deal with plane travel. But the tickets were bought and paid for and my family was super excited to see us and meet the baby.

Both Papa-in-Training and moi are air travel veterans. During our courtship a few years back, we spent more than our share of time shuttling back and forth between Newark and Heathrow Airports. We'll be recycling and upcycling and wearing out our clothes to threads and not owning a car forever in order to make up for the damn gigantic carbon footprint we acquired during that period. This is all to say that we are well familiar with babies on board. I'd long ago learned to tune out their cries by well, using ear plugs or headphones and realizing that there was nothing to be done and you might as well make the best of it.

But we also remember how crazy other passengers could get when there is a crying baby on a flight. I myself witnessed the pure uncensored fury exhibited by one grand example of humanity who seemed to be advocating that we throw the child out of the plane, so that he could get his 6 hours of beauty sleep.

So to say that we were a bit worried about how F. would react is perhaps an understatement.

I'd spoken to her pediatrician who'd recommended that she always have something to suck on, either a pacifier or a bottle during take-off and landing. She also recommended we give her some Benadryl but we decided to ignore that advice as my own reaction to having taken it once wasn't good. I wasn't about to medicate my baby just so she wouldn't make noise - we weren't about to try and escape North Korea for fuck's sake, just get from one continental shelf to another.

Baby F.'s First Plane Ticket! (technically this is her return ticket, but i couldn't find the other one. oops.)

We dutifully made sure that F. always had something to gnaw on and, behold, for there was quiet joy!

She barely made a peep during the whole trip. She cried a couple of times out of tiredness, etc, but she only cried for about a minute or so each time, which if anyone had a problem with, well, they can just go take a hike.

Having myself experienced non-stop crying jags on planes, I could barely believe our luck! The flight attendants fawned over her, other passengers cooed to her, and the flight was a success.

…Well, I didn't get any sleep, but that's normal for me on planes ;o)

But then we arrived in Lisbon…and still had to travel up north…

(To be continued)

Frapunzel

If any one of you has met little F., you might recall that her hair is well, pretty non-existent.

She’s almost 18 months old - next Sunday, WHOO-HOO! - yet her cranium coverage is sparse at best.

Exhibit A - January 2012

At the back it shows some signs of life, but up on front by her forehead? Yeah, not happening.

We had expected this.

Her Mama, aka Moi, didn’t have any hair besides some fuzzy down on her head up until she was about 9 months old. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch. Which given how much and how thick my own parents’ hair was, was a little odd.

The pictures that exist of me as an infant - earliest one is of my baptism at age 7 months - show me as a little baldy with just a soupçon of dark down upon my crown.

But then the next photos of me are at 12 months old...by which time a mess of curls has sprouted from my head and have threatened to take over everything in the land, much like a human version of kudzu.

And I’ve even found a letter from my Mama to my Avó (her Mama) saying how I’ve just suddenly sprouted all this hair at once around the age of 9 months.

So the whole ‘the-parents-have-really-thick-hair-but-the-baby-at-first-has-none’ thing was not a surprise and was indeed expected. I thought that much like what had happened with me, little F. would suddenly sprout a little baby Portuguese Afro before her first birthday.

Except that hasn’t happened.

Exhibit B: July 2013

It’s grown more, yes. But it’s still very scant and scattered.
It does show signs of having some curl, but if it didn’t that wouldn’t be strange seeing as her Papa-in-Training has straight-as-a-rod follicles.

What i didn’t expect though is that others would think she has ‘good’ hair. 

I’ll explain.

We went to our local park this morning with her Vôvô. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but the horrible heatwave and just generally miserable summer weather has prevented me from doing. Plus honestly I’ve been really tired in the mornings. Like crazy tired. 

But when I checked the weather forecast earlier in the week and saw that today we were due to have some sunny (but not too hot) weather, I thought it’d be a perfect day to pop out for some swings action.

As little F. swung away in utter joy, I got to talking a bit with the mother next to us. Her daughter was about the same age as F. - give or take a few weeks - and she had the most adorable little blonde curls tied up in tiny, for lack of a better word, Afro puffs. We got to talking about hair and how F.’s seemed to be in a state of hibernation and the other mother surprised me by saying ‘Well, at least she’s going to have good hair, unlike mine.’

I immediately said ‘Oh no, she has some curls growing in the back, they’re just combed out right now.’ And then realized that I immediately knew what she meant by ‘good hair’. Good hair is straight, which obviously then implies that curly hair is not ‘good’. 

I told her her baby’s hair was beautiful - ‘cause it was - and was left a bit sad about the curly-bad connotation.

I’ve had curly hair all my life. Not tight curls, although I did wish for them many a time as a child - that to me was the ideal hair :) - but pretty curly. And wavy. 

I’ve never not wanted to have curly hair and can’t recognize myself on the few occasions that my hair has been straightened out at the salon. Other people always seem to like me with straightened hair, but when I look in the mirror all I see is a stranger, or at best me play-acting, so its back to the curls for me.

But I had read in the past about the concept of ‘good hair/bad hair’ which is apparently very prevalent in the African-American population. I had just never encountered it in person yet.

I’m still not sure exactly what kind of hair F. is going to have. It seems pretty dark at the moment (my hair was reddish brown as a child but then became darker as I aged and it’s been (artificially) red since I was about 19, while Papa-in-Training's was straight, thick, and blonde as a baby and is now light brown and straight) and mostly straight with some curls if it gets wet or it’s humid out.

I’d love it if she had dark curly or wavy hair like me, but i’d love it just as much if it turned out to be blondish and straight like her Papa-in-Training’s. Or any combination thereof.

But regardless of what it ends up being, it’ll all be ‘good’ hair, because there’s no such thing as bad hair.

The Case of the Runaway Hat

Baby F.'s grandparents, all the way from good ol' Blighty, have come to visit her and Papa-in-Training. We've all been playing tourist with Nanny and Grandpa, showing them places we really like as well as visiting places we've always meant to see, but just haven't had a chance to. 

Last week, we popped on over to Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ, a wonderful park minutes away by light rail from our penthouse-in-the-sky. This is one of those places that produces a big 'face palm' moment, as in, "why don't we go there more often, i.e. more than once every 20 years"?*
 
I've trekked over many a time to Central Park in Manhattan, while all the time I've had this beauty in my backyard.
Silly really.
So a few weeks back, J., a Brooklyn friend, came over to check out all the cherry blossoms in bloom, the second biggest collection in the US after the ones in Washington, D.C.

Pretty flowers!

Sacred Heart Cathedral Basilica viewed from Branch Brook Park

Lovers' Lane

J. and I had a good time, while Papa-in-Training dealt with a far too fussy Baby F., so when a few weeks later, Nanny and Grandpa showed up at our doorstep, I knew we had to take them to this little jewel in our city.

Teeny tiny flowers - squee!

This time Baby F. was in a better mood, so together with her grandparents, we headed out to the park. It was a lovely day and we encountered much wildlife...well, a couple of waterfowl :o)

Duckies!

I found a friendly goose and shared some saltine crackers with him. It was the best interaction with a goose I've ever had, as they usually have a tendency to chase me while hissing as loudly as possible. Oh, and biting me, or at least trying to.

But this time with this goose, all was different and all was good :o)

My new bestie ;o)

(Little side note: When I approached the goose, there was a gentleman that was on the same path heading towards me and the goose. Upon seeing me feeding the goose - and then having a little photo session with the goose and its' pal (as seen below) - he stopped and sat down on a bench so as to not disturb us. He only got up and continued down the path once he saw that I'd finished and had walked away. He didn't have to do that, so thank you sweet stranger for allowing a silly woman some time with a goose.)

My new bestie's bestie

I should also point out that while all this was going on, Baby F. was in a deep, deep coma ;o) Which is good, 'cause she'd likely try to eat these:

Mushroom, mushroom!

We also popped over to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart so Baby F.'s grandparents could see that we too have some impressive cathedrals in Jersey. Not very old compared to English ones, but nonetheless impressive.

Big, ain't it?

You might be asking yourself though, what does this all have to do with a hat? And a runaway one to boot?
 
Well, upon our return home, we separated so the grandparents could go and pick up some late afternoon refreshments. I went on ahead to our flat and then waited at our front door, since Baby F.'s other grandparents were going to drop off some supplies. And well, we live on the 4th floor, so must conserve our energies ;o)

Soon enough, the Brit grandparents join us and that's when Grandpa mentions that a man has walked by carrying Baby F.'s hat.
What?!
But she was wearing it!

Somewhere along the last block or so to our building, she'd apparently thrown it off and I hadn't noticed. Meanwhile some enterprising and eagle-eyed soul had picked it up and was now walking speedily away from us with it.

I ran like a banshee after the man, all the while yelling 'Excuse me, excuse me!', which apparently no one pays attention to. I finally catch up with him and tell him in English that he's holding my baby's hat. He proceeds to try to tell me that he'd found it on the street. I spot from his accent that he's Brazilian so I switch to Portuguese and again state that it's my baby's hat and could I please have it back. Possibly operating under the old playground rule of 'finders keepers, losers weepers', he continues to argue with me about having found the hat. I point out again that it's a baby's hat, and he mentions how bacana it is. Yes, I know it's cool, that's why I gave it to the baby. I think from pure possible fear that this crazy lady in front of him might jump him for the hat, he finally handed it over. All the while, I'm just thinking, 'what in the world was he going to do with a small baby hat?'

I then rejoin the first set of grandparents, who have now been joined by the second set, as well as one of my downstairs neighbors, and we all wonder at the strangeness of people and at the case of the runaway hat. :o)

Odds and Ends : Odd monument found in a less traveled area

*Wish i was kidding about that every once 20 years bit. I think the last time I'd visited, outside of going with my friend J. a few weeks back, was in 1986!
Bad Newarker! Bad Newarker! ;o)

The Kitty Whisperer

Baby F. has had lots of adventures lately. The warm weather, or at least the non-rainy, non-frigid weather, has finally arrived in our neck of the woods, so we’ve taken to going out almost every weekend and exploring different new places for her.

Not that she needs to go outside to have any adventures though.

Seeing as she has her own little urban jungle right inside our apartment. Well, maybe she doesn’t have that many gigantic canopied trees to swing from, but she does have a bunch of jungle cats.

Oscar trying to nuzzle a bunny

We have three kitties. In descending order of well, size, there’s Oscar, the orange fatty, Franny, the black and white neurotic, and Polly, the tortoiseshell pygmy of the family.  They all have very distinctive personalities but they all love the heck out of us including Baby F.

They were fascinated by her from the day she came into our apartment, sneaking into her room to look at her, timidly going up to her to smell her and running to her room whenever she’d cry. Yep, they’d run into the room, not out. One might say they were checking on her, if one was feeling so inclined :o)

She for the most part, mostly ignored them at first. I swear it seemed as if they were somehow transparent during her first few months. Even after she could focus her eyes well enough to recognize Mama and Papa-in-Training and certainly Vóvó and Vôvô, still there was no sign of awareness that there were three curious furry creatures running about nearby.

But that’s all changed now.

She knows they’re there.
She knows... and she stalks them.

She’s taken to chasing them around when the mood strikes her, like when they’re just walking by, or trying to nap, or trying to eat, you know, constantly.

I might have touched upon her first word being ‘gato’ or cat in Portuguese. She also says ‘cat’, so is now fully bilingual ;o) What I haven’t mentioned is how she’ll use it as a mantra: ‘gato, gato, gato, gato, gato’. Which I’m sure is not at all disconcerting for the cats – to suddenly look up and see a very fast crawling miniature human coming at them while shrieking ‘GATO!!!’ at them.

She’s also come to be quite boorish when it comes to the kitties, I mean, besides the whole charging them at full speed while screaming like a banshee thing. She’s taken to watching them eat. And then afterwards tries to eat their food. Yep, doesn’t want to eat her own food, but stale leftover cat food? Yum!

Franny catching some zzzzz's in Baby F.'s rocking chair

This past week we had this great little happening:

Scene: Kitchen floor, box of recyclables full of folded up cardboard boxes and paper odds and ends.  Amongst them is a folded up ‘empty’ bag of kitty vittles.

      Baby F: [grabs folded bag and takes it out of the box]

      Papa-in-Training: [casually grabs bag out of hand of baby, but succeeds in upturning it, emptying
      its’ ‘empty’ contents] Crap!
      Baby F: [proceeds to start grabbing various bits of dry cat food from floor]
      Papa: Don’t eat that! [as he removes small tidbit from her hand]
      Mama-in-Training: She’s chewing on something!
      Papa: [removes vittles from inside baby’s mouth]
      Baby F.: [immediately puts another one in mouth]

      [Repeat infinitum until all tidbits have been quickly swept up]

She’s also come in very handy in cleaning up after them.

We just purchased a vacuum cleaner after much research and advice – we thought we could keep the place clean with only a broom and mop (we have laminate flooring and tiles), but 3 cats and a baby have proved to be our undoing. But if we had a couple more babies around like F. we probably wouldn’t have needed to buy one. 
Because she will pick up everything from the floor! The tiniest, most microscopic thing, like for example, a bit of clean litter left behind, will be expertly and minutely picked up by her very precise finger movements. Sigh.

She’s also somehow managed to develop perfect timing and will scare the begeesus out of the cats…on purpose. Earlier in the month, while sitting on my lap on the living room couch, she waited until Polly was walking right next to my legs, underneath her, to let out a big YELP! thereby making the poor cat jump out of her skin and take off running.

Polly checking out her new crib

Yet somehow they love her and watch out for her, with Oscar offering up his belly for a cuddle and nuzzling her with his head, while Polly tries to entice her into playing with her. Franny…well, he’s a bit wearier – I chuck that up to him having been a street cat in his early life. But given the right circumstances, i.e. he didn’t notice ;o) , he’ll let her pet him. Of course, the whole petting thing is still a bit of a struggle, as Baby F. thinks it entails pulling on their fur really hard…but then again, that’s what she does to us as well, so at least we’re all on equal footing ;o)

It’s great to see them with her though, just a couple more members of our family :o)

The Terrible Thirteens* …or how I almost came to lose my mind in the space of a fortnight ;o)

As I type this, which I’ve been trying to do for oh, about 2 weeks now, Baby F. is crying in her bedroom. The bedroom, whose door I’m sitting directly in front of. That she can see me from. That I’m only about 10 feet from.

I think I’ve been very lucky so far with Baby F. She wasn’t colicky, she slept through the night almost immediately after arriving home from the hospital, she’s good with people, friendly and sweet….

So maybe I had it coming after being so fortunate ;o). 

We had a period almost like this late last year. I call that time my lost Autumn. The season, principally late October and all – and I do mean all - of November, when she decided she’d become inconsolable and unhappy regardless of anything I did. And so I stopped doing pretty much anything besides feeding and changing and trying to amuse her.  My sleeping went kaput, I became a daytime zombie, and I fell into a terrible hole from which I just managed to emerge sometime around December 1^st or so.

But then it was all okay again. As quickly as the weirdness came, it went away. And all rejoiced, for Baby F. was truly merciful ;o)

But now it’s back. The weirdness, the tantrums, the indiscriminate screaming, the crazy flailing.

Even worse than before. 

Now she can crawl. The developmental stage that we were so pleased with, has now turned into a source of daily grief. Because with the ability to crawl, comes the unwillingness to stay still anywhere. Where before, that long gone time of 2 weeks ago , she was perfectly happy to amuse herself in her bedroom  - secure with a door gate (and it’s a large room) – she now freaks out at being placed in it.

Baby F. alternates between wanting to have some hugs and a cuddle on my lap to immediately pulling ‘The Matrix’ and throwing herself completely back, horizontally, with a stretch and a tautness that before seeing it, I’d have thought impossible from any human, much less a baby. 

And sure, some of these little tantrums are likely teething related. 

But only a very select few.

For the most part, she’s just going through a really bad phase.

I know this rationally, of course.

Both I and Papa-in-Training have Googled our hearts out and consulted whatever books we’ve picked up along the way or that fellow Mamas and Papas have kindly passed on to us. So we know this is not unusual or odd.

But knowing this and dealing with it on a daily basis is another thing altogether. I’m finding it very hard to deal with it. I dread Mondays and having to take care of Baby F. on my own until either Papa-in-Training comes home or Vóvó drops by for a wee visit. And of course I feel like crap for feeling this way. But when you have tons of things to do, your apartment is in shambles, you’re neglecting your friends, and your baby is being impossible, it’s hard not to end up feeling crappy.

Weekends help tremendously, when Papa-in-Training pretty much takes over and I get to at least have a semblance of some time without having to take care of a wailing baby, whether it be to have a proper shower, write a letter or tidy up a closet.

But it’s not quite enough right now.

We’re pretty much stuck, the two of us. 

Baby F. with the wailing and the flailing and me with the guilt at not really knowing how to or wanting to deal with it, but of course doing it.

I hope this ‘phase’ goes away soon so we can get back to being semi-productive and having fun learning and playing, instead of near-constant tantrums. 

I know it will. We’ll just have to wait it out. 

Wish us luck :o)



*Thirteen months, of course, not thirteen years ;o).

Raider of every last book

We knew from the beginning, even before Baby F. was born, that we wanted her to be bilingual. I’m originally from Portugal and all of my family speaks Portuguese. A few of the younger members can speak English, but for the most part it’s Portuguese all the way on my side.

We read the articles about how Baby F.’s language development might be slightly delayed due to the dual nature of her learning, but also read about how babies eventually caught up. We thought it well worth the small delay, since to do otherwise would cut her off from half of her family – the larger half too ;o)

The way we’ve managed it so far is thus:

During the day, Mama-in-Training, aka moi, and Baby F., speak in Portuguese…well, I speak and she mostly babbles. Then in the evening when Papa-in-Training comes home, we switch to English. I try my hardest to only use Portuguese during the day, although of course, the occasional English word slides in unannounced. Mostly when I encounter something apocalyptic in her diaper or when the cats have once again rebelled and attempted to take over our flat ;o)

I think it’s going pretty well – she babbles a whole lot, even when she’s just on her own, playing.

But the best part is that she has now spoken her first words!

And Ta Da! -  they’re in both languages!

She can say Mama – which is the same in Portuguese and English - as well as Daddy; but most importantly for her everyday life, she’s said gato, which is cat in Portuguese.  She sort of ignores the hard g and instead says 'ahto', but she definitely says it. She almost said Oscar today (one of the cats’ names), but I think that’s still a bit too complicated. I’m pretty pleased with 'ahto' for now :o)

She can recognize many other words though and point to the objects they stand for, which is just in keeping with a child her age. Today’s recognized item was meia, or sock. She looooooves her socks. Particularly loves to take them off and chew on them. Sometimes she likes to chew on them while they’re still attached to her feet – she’s all sorts of flexy…then again, so is her mama. I could’ve been Daniel Day-Lewis’s stand-in for My Left Foot. Really. It's a bit freaky ;o)

And reading to her / reading while nursing her or while near her, seems to be paying off as she absolutely loves to ‘read’. Loves to look at books - although honestly at this point, she mostly looks at them upside down – and loves to play with and grab them off shelves.

Exhibit A:

'I'll just take a look at one wee little book, shall i?'

Exhibit B:

'Every book in the world...i must haz them!'

Cue Papa-in-Training’s reaction upon entering Baby F.’s room:
'WTF?!?'

What he didn’t see was that after the first bookshelf cube was emptied, Baby F. wanted to start in on the upper one. I told her no, to which she promptly reacted to by wailing her head off.

Ah, the joys of reading  :P

Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future...with apologies to Steve Miller ;o)

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

How can it be March already? I've blinked and Christmas flew by. Then my birthday. Then Baby F.'s birthday. Then Presidents' Day.
Will I next blink and it'll be Easter?

Wait.

Is it Easter already?

Did i miss it?

Gaaaaaaaaah!

Everyone tells you when you're a new mom that time flies. To appreciate the baby years because they'll soon be gone and you'll have a grumpy teenager in your hands...not literally in your hands, 'cause then they'd be like Thumbelina, but i digress...

But then you actually have a baby.

And if you stay home with her as i did (no idea if the same applies for work-outside-the -home mamas), you scoff and tell them, Pshaw, I say! Pshaw, to your idea of time flying.

Because time draaaaaaaaags when you stay home with a newborn. The days go on for weeks, months even. You hope it's a Friday and realize it's only 9:30 am on Monday, so sleep-deprived and disoriented have you become.

But then something happens around month 9th or so of taking care of your newborn. And suddenly, you can't keep up with time. It flies, it gallops, it slips past you without even a 'How do you do?'

And all that slowness that you complained about almost constantly? That vague tortoise-like feeling you experienced on a daily basis? It's gone. And left in its' place is a sense of not being able to keep up, leaving things to the side, always being behind, because the days are so fast!

Of course, time is only an illusion, a man-made construct to help us organize our lives. We all know the feeling of those last 10 minutes of a class in the 6th grade - how excruciatingly long they were - and how 10 days of a wonderful vacation can feel like merely a moment. But geesh, i really wasn't expecting such a drastic change.

I'm trying as much as i can to appreciate each moment with baby F. and i think I'm managing for the most part. Ironically enough the thing that i think made the first months seem to drag so much, the lack of sleep, is still a constant in my everyday. I've always had sleep issues but they've obviously been exacerbated by having a little one that occasionally wakes up during the night.

But that's actually the funniest bit...she doesn't even wake up that often during the night. Almost not at all. And when she does, Papa-in-training is the one to soothe her 'cause i just seem to get her too excited and even more awake.

What she does do though is take long naps...on top of me. And yep, she's almost 13 months and i haven't yet managed to break her out of that habit :o(

So i end up spending upwards of 3 hours during the day sitting down without being able to move a great deal. And i don't get to do most of anything during the day...which then leads me to staying up late at night trying to catch up, to write a friend, to do some writing, to do some tidying up.

But getting back to my original thought...

Even though my sleep is still crap, suddenly the days aren't so slow anymore. And I'm not really sure why.
Until i figure out why, I'll just keep on enjoying getting to see Frida grow and learn new things.

Artwork made for our friend's birthday using Penguin cover Postcards :o)

P.S. Because i always like to have a pic of something I made/did in each post, and since he finally received it, here's one my friend took of a birthday present Papa-in-Training and moi made for him.

P.P.S. Programming note: If you like Pawn Stars at all but like your items a bit weirder and heck, even a bit scarier, then fire up your Netflix and throw Oddities in your Queue. Lovely store-owners with super eclectic tastes. I've sort of devoured most of the available episodes within the last 3 days...i did mention the whole being trapped under a baby thing, didn't i? ;o)

They say it's your birthday!

I’ve been away for a while.

Not literally, I haven’t left the metropolitan area, much less the country, but I’ve been away in my head. Just a lot to do, not enough time and not enough rest to manage to get it all done, etc, blah blah blah, ad nauseum.

And then it gets a bit overwhelming to write again.
Like that muscle has been atrophied and you just can’t get yourself to even write a little bit, much less a whole page.

But it’s a new year – Year of the Snake! – and I’ve got to get started again. I started this after all to make sure I’d note the little things down so my baby would have a written record of her early years, before she’s able to write her own story.  And also so I’d look back and not wonder what non-baby related things I’d done with myself during her infancy – that I’d planned and executed various projects and kept myself sharp, all whilst playing patty cake and having massive marathon games of playing with blocks ;o)

A lot has happened since I last wrote back in the Fall. For one, baby F. has turned 1 year old!
The day of her birthday party happened to coincide with Lunar New Year, so we decided it would be fun to get some Chinese Zodiac decorations and have it as the theme.

We started out by visiting Pearl River Mart, one of the coolest stores in Manhattan, chock-a-block full of goodies from all over Asia, but particularly China. Picked ourselves up some paper dragons and cute New Year boy and girl babies, some apples and goldfish and lastly a great little hanging piece with each one of the Chinese Zodiac animals.

I also decided to include a request in the party invitation for each guest’s birth year. I made each guest a pin of the head of their Zodiac animal to take home as a party favor.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take the best of photos, but here’s a pic:

All the little duckies lined up in a row...ok, no ducks, but lots of roosters and rats :o)

Another reason we ended up going with the Lunar New Year theme was a fortuitous coincidence. After Halloween I happened to have stopped in a Toys"R"us store and happened to spot a couple of heavily discounted baby costumes.

Baby F. has a little bear one-piece, complete with ears and paws that she looks adorable in - she’s worn it out on days when it was chillier and I actually had someone think that she was a teddy bear, rather than a baby in a bear costume. Granted it was from the back and the lady was possibly a bit myopic, but still, she makes a very cute bear. Kind of like this on the left:


So I thought picking up some heavily discounted baby costumes was a no-brainer. One of the pieces we picked up was a dragon costume, this exact one on the right:

We promptly put her in it and she ended up wearing it during Thanksgiving dinner, ‘cause... well, why not? We took a few pics that day and I ended up using a photo I’d taken of our city’s skyscrapers, merging it with one of the baby, tweaking it a bit and sending it out as our Christmas card.

It was a huge hit and when I was first thinking of what to do for her first birthday, I remembered the dragon picture. And only then did I realize that Baby F.’s Chinese Zodiac sign is a Dragon. That pretty much solidified it. I even made her a cake in the shape of a dragon. Now granted, this is not a particularly well made cake. I’d never worked with fondant before and frankly I’d been so busy hand-making little tiny animal heads into the wee hours of the dawn that I left the cake far too late and was literally trying to get it finished as the first guests were due.

Still, it was edible and looked like a dragon, so here’s a pic:

Yeah, i forgot its' mouth and it's a bit odd that it's just laying on top of aluminum foil. Hey, it was my first one! :P

I used this pattern to start off of and then just kind of adjusted as I went along, making it twice as big as the original one.

Most of our friends were able to attend and Baby F. had a ball looking at the other kids there and chattering at all of the guests.  She forgot about her nap and even about her dinner, so excited was she to see everything and everyone. I had a plan to take a photo of her with each guest/family, but that didn’t quite work out. Although she was very pleased to smile and coo and gab away with everyone, she pretty much just wanted to stay on her Vóvó for most of the day with occasional forays into the arms of some lucky guests.

There were heaps of thoughtful gifts both from those in attendance and from those who couldn’t make it - 3-headed dragon puppet! Wooly mammoth puppet! Baby Crayons! Books and clothes galore! - and you could feel all the love and affection for Baby F. in the room. It was a lot of work and the prep was a bit stressful , but I’m so glad I was able to do it both for F. and for everyone that came.

Happy First Birthday little one!