Butterflies

This morning Alice and I went to the Butterfly Pavilion in nearby Westminster.

As soon as we walked through the two sets of doors and into the butterfly garden, my camera fogged up from the humidity.

The light kept changing and the butterflies were moving fast.

In short, taking pictures was haaaard.

 

But I persevered.  And I relied heavily on the iPhoto editing features to fix things up for me.

 

We wandered around the butterfly garden for a while, looking at the little creatures flying all around us and stopping to admire the water features and the turtles.  It was a nice way to spend the morning. 

 

Matt taught Alice a great word today: "happy". She says it exactly right, pronouncing both syllables correctly.  When I hear her say it, I feel like we're getting a sneak peek into an older, more verbal Alice.  An Alice who will tell us exactly what she wants instead of just pointing urgently and whining "uuuuuuuh".  One who says "water" instead of "wawa", "noodle" instead of 'nunu" and "milk" instead of "milk-a". 

 

It's funny how sometimes, she seems all baby.  Like today when our three-year-old neighbor walked right up and pushed her down.  And Alice just fell on the ground and started crying.  It was one of those awful cries that starts out just as a soundless, open mouth and shimmering, tear-filled eyes for a few seconds until she can get enough air to really begin to bawl.  But other times, like when I put on her coat to go outside and she eagerly instructs me to "zip!" and then reminds me to grab my "purse! purse!", she seems like a kid.  A kid with opinions and ideas and preferences.

Last week we were at a little art workshop with some other children.  I looked over to the corner to see Alice staring intently at a little boy whom she had never met.  She tenderly stroked his cheek and then leaned in for a kiss.  Other times, she's not so outgoing.  This afternoon, when another mom offered Alice an apple, her only reaction was to furrow her brow and look down at the ground, as if looking at the lady directly was too embarrassing or scary to contemplate. (And it wasn't that she didn't want the apple; she accepted it readily from me.)

When we put Alice to bed at night, as soon as we start to move from the rocker to the crib, and even before we've finished uttering the words "good night", she starts to cry.  She seems sad that the fun of the day is over and also indignant at having no control over the situation.  Even so, on some nights, mid-cry and as upset as she is, she manages to wail out "byyyyye" to Matt or me as we're tucking her in, and sometimes even forces her mouth to pucker into a kiss, and it's clear that she's trying so hard to fight her instinct just to give in to the tears and keep crying. 

I suppose as time goes on, I'll see fewer flashes of the baby and more of the kid.  Soon, the wordless whines will give way to worded whines and then, hopefully, to just words (followed by "please", please).  As for the other stuff, whether she'll be shy or outgoing, tender or tough, stoic or dramatic, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  

Snowy Weekend

If either Matt or I had harbored any doubt that we had moved to a city that takes its winter seriously, it was banished forever this past weekend.  The snow began on Thursday evening, and it was still coming down when we woke up on Saturday morning.

 

Even though we try to get outside every day to burn off some energy and soak up a little vitamin D, I welcome a forced day in every now and again, when there's nothing else to do but sit in the bay window and watch the snow fall, finger paint, and read a novel at nap time.  

 

We played a lot of "Good Night. Shhhh. Sleep."/"GOOD MORNING!". [The "Good Night" part is whispered and is accompanied by eyes closing, head resting, and the occasional fake snore; the "Good Morning!" part is always yelled and is accompanied by giggles, claps, and wide-eyed expressions of alertness.]

We played a Peekaboo/Hide-and-Seek/Chase combination game where Alice peeks from behind the curtain and around the french door in our guest room and Matt teases her by tapping on that door and then running to the other door, or by throwing a balloon in through one door and then running into the room through the other door to surprise Alice (who is still peering around the first door) by yelling "BOOGADA BOOGADA!" from behind.   Much screaming and laughter ensues.

 

But, it's not as if we didn't get out at all this weekend.  I mean, somebody had to shovel, and we had lofty aspirations of a Saturday afternoon spent sledding. 

We fortified with a large lunch, and went right to Target where we loaded up on gloves, an inner tube (should we have expected all the proper sleds to be sold out on the Saturday after the biggest snow of the season?), and new boots for Alice.  We did buy Alice a pair of boots at the beginning of the winter, but, judging from her reaction when we would try to put them on her lately, either the the boots were filled with boiling oil or they were too small.  We took a guess and went two sizes up on the new ones, and haven't heard a complaint yet.

In preparation for a long afternoon in the snow, we stuffed snacks and tissues into our coat pockets and had a tube of Vaseline at the ready to rub into red, chubby, chapped, little cheeks.  We let Alice put some on her cheeks too.  Ba-dum Ching! We drove to Commons Park, waded through the knee-high snow drifts, hauled ourselves, the inner tube and Alice up to the top of the hill, and enjoyed three trips down, rear ends sagging through the hole in the tube and dragging the whole way down.  On the fourth trip, the tube decided it had suffered enough and popped halfway down.  It found a new home in the trash can at the bottom of the hill next to a cracked plastic serving tray.

Back at the house, we figured that we'd get the most out of our snow gear and enjoy a little more fun outside.

The snow definitely brings out the kid in some of us. I'm referring to the Hoosier one of us, in case you were wondering.

On Sunday, we experienced another perk of living out West: the Super Bowl was over and we had vacuumed the last tortilla chip off the rug by 9pm.

This weekend, Alice discovered an absolutely precious mealtime activity: blowing bubbles into her drinks.  After months of drinking through a straw, only in the past few days has she discovered the fun of blowing out instead of drinking in.  She has also added a new twist on her old favorite guilty pleasure of writing on the walls.  Now, after she scribbles on the walls with her crayons, she points accusingly at the mark and shouts "NO! NO!".  On the bright side, at least she realizes that there is something naughty going on, and it is pretty clever to try to place the blame on the wall, no?

Boda + Jay

Aunt Boda and Uncle Jay came to visit us from California this past weekend.

 

We're so happy they came. 

 

They got in on Saturday morning, after having woken up before the crack o' dawn for their flight, and they didn't even complain of fatigue when we hustled them right out the door to Boulder.  They begged us to listen to the CD from Alice's music class the whole way there.  We rocked out pretty hard to "I'm Gonna Play", "My Lady Wind", and "Two Little Kitty Cats" all the way up Route 36. We strolled around the pedestrian mall on Pearl Street and stopped in for lunch at a restaurant before heading back home.

After an afternoon nap for some and an hour of crib antics for others, we spent the evening eating ice cream and playing Settlers of Catan.

On Sunday we headed out to a Creole cafe where we had beignets and dinner-plate-sized biscuits.  Alice scored a set of Mardi Gras beads too. 

It was just nice enough to head over to Washington Park for a little birdes watching and kite flying afterwards. 

We were sad to see them go on Sunday evening.  Alice kept popping into the guest room asking for Boda and Jay. 

 

At least the beads are here to stay!

Eighteen Months

Last week, Alice and I went to the doctor for her 18-month checkup.  Where in the world has the time gone?

She's shy around strangers now, so when the doctor walked in, she held on to me for dear life, and when he listened to her heart with the cold stethoscope and checked her ears with the ear-checker-scope, she screamed and cried and tried to scramble all the way up and onto my head to get away.

She warmed up some when the nice doctor produced a brand new book for her to take home. Unsurprisingly, that book is now in heavy rotation, since it's just page after page of objects for her to point to. Alice makes it clear that Matt and I are to name whatever it is she points to. Overandoverandover.  This is an activity that Alice seems to find endlessly satisfying. Mom and Dad kinda' wonder, what's wrong with a little plot line or character development every now and then?

Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds.  I can hear her in her crib right now, chatting herself to sleep as she exclaims, "Shoes! Shoes! Shoes!"; "Oh!"; "Apple?"; "Baby? Baby?"; "Dada! Dada?"; "Wow! Wow!"; "Bubble?" and other words that are unintelligible but no less emphatic.

Physically, she's growing as well, measuring at 34.75 inches tall and weighing 28 pounds and 14 ounces. She definitely inherited Matt's height.

She is endlessly entertaining (says her unbiased mother). Whether I'm biased or not, I swear that she's just plain good company, alternating between spunky, sweet, clever, and goofy by the minute.

Sometimes, but just sometimes, when things aren't going her way, she loses all self control and explodes. Like the time that I told her we weren't going to be drawing with markers at the neighbors house, and she reached for the first thing she could find (the page out of a magazine) and tore it apart with her teeth. Or when she couldn't figure out how to get her shoes off this morning. So she tried to bite them off.

She's only 18 months old, after all. And I can't help but laugh at those sudden bursts of emotion even while trying to help her find another way to deal with them. Maybe I'm a little empathetic because if she has Matt to thank for her height, she has me to thank for her temper (can we all agree to call it spiritedness instead?).

Maybe I'm just feeling the effects of the extra sleep that Alice's new later schedule affords me, but these last couple of weeks have just been nice.

I have a feeling that I'll be reading this post wistfully in a few weeks: if I've learned one thing as a parent so far it's that everything is a phase. But for now, I think I'll just enjoy this one.

Some for Me, Some for You

 

Good Day

Some days are just good days for no particular reason.

This day started with my baby girl perched in her favorite spot, enjoying the sunshine that we were missing yesterday.

We attended our first Music Together class where we banged on percussion and sang "Jimmy Crack Corn" (not the Eminem/50 Cent version, in case you were wondering) and had a free-dance session to a little Kool and the Gang. 

And speaking of Kool, I'm pretty sure that if I Photoshopped a Harley over her Schwinn and a leather bomber jacket over her pink puffer coat, this photo would be perfect. Can't you just hear her saying "Hop on back.  We're ditching sixth period and heading to the race track"?

  

We rode up and down the street with her feet dangling and getting smacked by the pedals every time they came around.  She didn't mind one bit.

I cracked open the paints I had bought a few weeks ago and pulled out the most generously cut bib we own, and Alice went to town painting.  According to her, every color of paint in the set is "yellow" (with prominent tongue protrusion on the "ll" portion of the word), except for one color, which is "boo," naturally.

It got messy.

 

We lingered over bath time tonight, partly to be sure that every bit of paint had been washed away, but mostly because there were shapes to draw on the tub with the tub crayons that she got for Christmas, and targets to hit with streams of water squeezed from the mouths of blowfish bath toys, and shampoo bubbles to be blown and popped.

These things take time, you know.

Snow?

Yesterday we were jacket-less at the park, and today we woke up to snow.  There were about 4 or 5 inches on the ground, and lots of ice underneath, which made driving treacherous enough for us to decide to bag the playgroup that our neighbor had invited us to crash and stay inside.

Alice and I spent lots of time playing and chatting, respectively, with the neighbors, and even though we remained indoors all day, it tired Alice out enough to make for a three-hour nap.  It was blissful.  Think there's something wrong in the world when I use the word "blissful" to describe three uninterrupted hours of financial planning? Me neither.



Ever since we came back from DC, Alice has gotten really excited every time we say the blessing before meals.   She clasps her hands together ever so tightly and says the same unintelligible word over and over, indicating that I am also to clasp my hands and say the blessing. Then she grins and does it again.



Such a pious kid.