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!

Fast Food Nation

Baby F. has started eating solids.
...well, i say solids, but really it's just a bunch of mush. 
As it should be, considering she has, count'em, zero teeth. So we've started what her pediatrician recommended - we gave her the same veggie/fruit for 3 days in a row to find out if she's allergic to anything. 

And what wondrous thing have we discovered so far?
Only that she likes *everything*. Broccoli, spinach, apple, strawberry, the occasional fingertip's worth of ketchup ;o).
Everything.

Broccoli *and* apple? Stop it, you're spoiling me ;o)

This doesn't of course mean that it's all been smooth sailing though. Although she chomped down on her spinach like our very own baby Popeye (complete with super arm strength - really, she's crazy strong), spinach alas did not agree with her and we'll have to forgo it for now. Cue sad face.

But the most surprising thing for me has been how quickly she took to eating food. One day she's fighting us, turning her face away from the choo-choo spoon of pap, and the next she has her mouth open eons before we've even cracked open the seal on her veggie du jour. 

I started out giving her half a jar each time she fed and dutifully refrigerating the other half, to giving her the full jar and having her sometimes ask for more - the apple one *is* quite tasty :o)

I'm hoping she continues to be this open-minded about food into the future, but i know that this early enthusiasm doesn't necessarily mean anything as far as her taste-buds-to-be.

But it's nice to know that at least for now, i have a little foodie in the making.