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We started trimming the huge blue bush in our backyard. It’s a thin layer of blue-purple jacaranda-colored flowers over a whole lot of spooky dead stuff. I think it’s about 30 feet wide: monstrous, and way too big for our yard. With a machete and a saw, Ben tunneled into the middle of the bush, then tried to chop down the main stem, only to discover that actually, this bush had grown over a tree. Yes, there was an entire dead tree inside our bush. With the tree cut down, the bush collapsed on Ben, but he got out okay and now the whole thing looks much better.
Our land is hard-packed dry sand. Not much grows here, but what does survive is tenacious.
I’ve finally got some of my own seedlings going, though. There are flowers on my poppy, sunflower, lavender, and tomato plants. I have high hopes for the sage, too, and the transplanted lilies. Ben cut down two sickly trees (in addition to the bush-smothered tree), and he opened things up a lot, but there’s still so much left to do. Even the compost takes longer to go through its composting cycle, here, because everything is so dry and foreign to me. I was a much better gardener in New England, I swear I was.
That was how we spent our weekend. That, and helping S&V move — mostly by watching their baby and bringing them meals. And getting to see C&J. Ben went on a fast group-bike-ride, I got to go to yoga, Sophie giggled a lot while watching us garden. And refused to nap, except in the car. (This morning I finally got her napping in her stroller, at least.) That was our weekend, and it was surprisingly satisfying.
Sophie got a rash on Monday and refused to eat, so I took her to the doctor. It turns out it was just a virus that’s already on its way out, but it had led to another ear infection, so she’s back on antibiotics now. Third ear infection in 13 months. I don’t know if that’s excessive or not.
But what makes me feel better is thinking about an 18-month-old we met last week at the cardiologists’ waiting room. That older girl didn’t know what to do when Sophie tossed her a ball and passed her a book. This 18-month-old hadn’t ever interacted with other children, her grandma said. She had no cousins, so there was no one to interact with. This baffles me. No playground, no supermarket, no church, no daycare, no family-friendly restaurants, no playdates, no baby-signing-class, no library story-time, no toddler gym at the Y. I realize that most of that list may be unique to upper-middle-class anxious parenting, but doesn’t everyone have to go to the supermarket?
Sophie sees a lot of other babies in any given day. Sophie knows how to play with others, and I like that about her, even though it means that she also gets all these ear infections.
All the baby books say that babies won’t interact until they’re 2 years old, but Sophie plays catch and tag and burbling-talk with almost any child she meets. She likes to pass out food. She’s like her mom, in that way.
In other Sophie news, she said her first two-syllable word yesterday: “Bubbles.”
In my attempts to be more-than-a-mommy, I just updated the about section of this blog. So click on that and tell me what you think.
It was a weekend of firsts. Saturday morning was Sophie’s first mountain-bike ride, and my second mountain-bike ride. We went on fairly-flat beginner’s trails in Penasquitos Canyon, with Ben pulling Sophie in the bike trailer. I think I had more fun than she did, but she liked the shady bridge over the bubbling creek. I think it was the first small waterfall she’s ever seen. I’m hoping for more family outings like this.
Saturday afternoon I went hula-dancing, when I finally mastered moving the hula to my shoulders and also to my hand over my head and then back down again, while constantly revolving in a somewhat smooth motion. It’s not too smooth though, I know because Ben laughed when I showed him my new skills.
Then, on Saturday night we had our first babysitter. It was our neighbor Katie, who is only 11 years old, which is terrifying to me until I remember that 11 was when I myself started babysitting. Sophie was already asleep, so all Katie had to do was call us if Sophie cried, while we went to a friends’ party for 2 baby-free hours. I felt like a grown-up again. I got to be in a group and not endlessly talk about my baby. Saturday was a day when I wasn’t only reading kids’ books over and over, making the same circuit among the baby-toys in our house that I always make. Saturday was a day with more than 2 outings. Saturday left me feeling energetic.
While we were out, our cat caught her first lizard, which terrified Katie, but Katie was smart enough to phone her mom, who came over and conveniently disposed of the lizard. Then Sophie woke up, but Katie managed to talk her back to sleep. Pretty good for an eleven-year-old on her first babysitting job.
Then Sunday was Sophie’s and my first time watching a mountain-bike race. This meant getting up at 6 am and getting in the car for a two-and-a-half-hour drive, which actually wasn’t bad, since by 8am Sophie had fallen asleep for her first nap. The race was at a ski resort in Big Bear. Sophie and I spent most of the day hanging out in the parking lot, which was shady, thankfully, but also dusty and hot. There were other young kids, some of whom she liked. One child shared his matchbox cars, thrillingly. It was pretty fun, for a parking lot. Kind of like a picnic: there were even burgers for sale. Still, by noon, Sophie was ready to go home. Ben’s race had just started. Sophie cried for a loud half-hour before I finally lulled her to sleep on my lap.
Every 45 minutes or so, Ben would race by on the looping track. I was supposed to hand him waterbottles. All the other wives and girlfriends were nervously practicing their water-bottle hand-off technique. But I had a cranky baby finally sleeping on my lap, so I kept delegating the water-bottle hand-off duties to others (there was a particularly helpful twelve-year-old) – even after Sophie woke up after his first lap. I’m not a good support team, I don’t think. I’m not a good sports-watcher in general. I’m not good with passivity.
Neither is Sophie. In the car-ride home, she napped but then woke up, screaming and furious for the last hour or two of the drive, flinging every toy we offered her, inconsolable. I don’t think we’ll go to any more mountain-bike races, at least not any that are more than an hours’ drive away. Ben says he’s going to wait till Sophie asks to go. But that may be soon, since today Sophie started her baby-sign-language class.
Ben came in fourth, by the way, which is amazing considering that he just moved up in category to Expert, and he’s only been racing now for about a month.
I have recently emailed this to three different new parents, so I’ve decided to post this here for everyone. After having read dozens of books, there are a few gems out there and they’re not the bestsellers. Here’s my list of my favorite parenting books. I have no idea why these aren’t bestsellers, except that I think too many people just reach for the most easily accessible book, instead of the best.
- Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden, Be Prepared: A Practical Guide for New Dads. This is hilarious & helpful & nicely-illustrated with cartoons that made every new parent I know fall over laughing. I still quote his advice, for instance, when you take your baby camping, just let her get dirty: it will help prevent sunburn. Simple, true, helpful, and funny.
- Armin Brott, The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year. Somehow, I like dad books better than mom books. Less fuss, good clear advice. Brott is a little new-agey, but reasonably assesses lots of fads, and I like him. I especially like his book for expectant fathers, actually – but pregnancy advice books would make another list.
- Denise Fields, et al, Baby 411. Practical, concise, reasonable, especially good on health information. Written by doctors. If you only buy one book, this is the one to get.
- Elizabeth Pantley, The No-Cry Sleep Solution. Indispensable for babies who aren’t perfect sleepers – which I think may be pretty much every baby.
- Annabel Karmel, any of her cookbooks. First Meals seems to be the newest, but what we have and use almost-daily is an earlier edition, The Healthy Baby Meal Planner. It looks like either one will work. She’s a professional chef with good ideas for homemade kids’ food.
Also, as long as you’re bookshopping, I highly recommend some CDs:
- Priscilla Herdman’s “Stardreamer”
- Raffi’s “Baby Beluga”
- Various 90s independent bands, “For the Kids”
- and, if you can stand it, anything by The Wiggles will make long car-rides go by faster, but those lyrics will never ever get out of your brain. Willaby wallaby woo.
I’m skipping some of the classic baby advice books. Here’s why.
I found the What to Expect series to be paranoid & micro-managing. I couldn’t stand the pregnancy book, advising me to tape pictures of healthy babies on my fridge to remind me to eat well, as if I might forget, and going on for pages about whether to be scared of the microwave. The answer, finally, is that there’s nothing to fear from your microwave – but after reading pages of discussion, you’ll be paranoid too.
I found the Dr Sears’ basic book to be guilt-inducing, even though I follow most of his advice: baby-wearing, co-sleeping, extended nursing, etcetera. I think Dr Sears took too long to say everything, and had too many declarations of “You’ll ruin your child forever if you are so lazy that you neglect to wear her in a sling for hours every day…” kinda things. So I’m not recommending it either. Armin Brott or Gary Greenberg can tell you all you need to know about raising a happy & reasonable child, leavened with some health advice from Baby 411.
Other books were too strict (babies MUST be on a schedule, and MUST be taught the word “no”…) or too loosey-goosey. Or too tangential, going off on whole chapters about how to have decent self-esteem despite stretch-marks. The father’s books didn’t have those patronizing tangents. That’s one reason I preferred the dad’s books.
Here’s an interesting article from yesterday’s New York Times Magazine about how hard it is for moms & dads to split their work equally.
Ben has just posted some great new photos of Sophie. She’s got so many new expressions now. She has a few words, too: “Ball” means every toy to Sophie, and there’s also “Bye,” “Hello,” “Daddy,” and “Mmmm” for tasty food or for mommy. She loves reading, or at least flipping book pages while humming to herself. She loves climbing. I think she grows every time I blink.
We haven’t been taking as many photos lately – we’ve been busy – but Sophie’s great-grandparents were in town this weekend, to attend their cousin’s 90th birthday party, so there was occasion for more photographs. You can see the most recent Sophie photos here, or just click on the link to Ben’s flickr page that’s in the blogroll.
Cheery fake news here. I especially like the sports headlines, but the whole thing made me smile. And then wince, since it’s sadly still such an alternate google-news universe.
Sophie started walking on Friday. She’s been walking-while-holding-hands for weeks now, and she’s been cruising around holding on to furniture for months, it seems, but Friday was her first true independent walking. Once she even looked at a coffee-table, looked at her hand, looked at the coffee-table, clearly decided not to hold on to the table, and tottered forwards a step or two farther before falling. It’s adorable. For her, it seems, the secret to walking is all in her attitude towards falling. She falls every five or six feet, looks around curiously, then picks herself up again and keeps going. It’s a wonderful attitude. I want to have the same approach to all my little failures & bumps.
I need that attitude because I have a new sport, too: hula-hoop dancing. It’s a sport, really it is. We meet in the park, and we get good abs & attitude.
Our other new sport is variations on my oldest sport, bicycling. I’ve been bicycling Sophie the mile or two to daycare all week. Today I biked her four miles to a festival in a park, then over to Sarah & Vinton’s and back home. This is harder than it sounds because of all the steep hills around here. Also because Sophie doesn’t like sitting still, even in the bike-trailer, but I have discovered that she enjoys it more if I let her wear her tiny plastic sunglasses, of which she is quite proud.
The other biking variation that I’m about to try is mountain-biking. Ben just helped me buy a mountain-bike this evening. We got a great deal on a barely-used bike that Ben found on Craig’s List. He’s in the garage now tricking it out with the tires he won in last week’s race, and better pedals and longer handle-bar-stem and a beautiful handlebar. I’ve never actually mountain-biked, but I’m willing to try, if only to see more of the wilderness around here, and get out with my husband & baby.
I already posted my basic baby-food recipes here, but now we have discovered a little more variety.
- We’ve gone beyond banana and avocado to almost any soft fruit: peaches, kiwi, pineapple, mango, strawberries, blackberries.
- Some vegetables seem to help her toothing gums too: chilled slices of cucumber are a favorite right now, sometimes cooked potatoes (including french fries, unfortunately), and even raw carrot. She bites off only as much as she can swallow, conveniently. She doesn’t seem to like frozen peas as much as every other baby, though, except in pea-zucchini soup.
- Cream-on-top yogurt remains a favorite. I stir in some wheat germ and some crushed flax seed, and she laps it all up.
- Toast with cream cheese.
- Hardboiled eggs now, not just scrambled.
- Couscous with vegetables mixed in, and chicken.
- Fish in a white-sauce. You know, a sauce of butter & flour & milk, and maybe some herbs – the adults in our household love this meal, too.
- Almost any dried fruit. This is another chewy food that seems to soothe her gums a lot, and she can suck happily on it while I’m making the rest of our dinner.
I’ll try to keep adding as we keep discovering more quick healthy foods that work. Sophie has only two teeth on top, and two on bottom, so I’m truly amazed at what she can gum. I may make orange-juice popsicles later today and see how those go.
