In a Twitchy Sort of Way

Out and About

2012-02-09T18:43:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday, the day after we brought Ellie home from the hospital, we celebrated Margaret’s second birthday. It was, of course, not really her birthday, but I didn’t feel up to planning a party from the hospital, and we didn’t think that she knew that it was her birthday. Besides, we weren’t sure that Ellie would be regarded as a good gift. I mean, we know she’s awesome, but we weren’t sure that she would register as such in the newly two-year-old brain.

Anyway, I don’t have any good pictures of the party, because the light was low and my camera was still in my bag. My cell phone pictures aren’t that great. So I will wait to talk about the actual birthday until I get those from Ron.*

But one of Margaret’s presents was a tricycle. This is a step up from her 4-wheeled scoot bike that she has at Leo’s parents’ house.** She was eager to try it, so on Sunday, we took it for a spin.

This picture makes her look very competent and grown up and like she’s on her way. It is a somewhat erroneous impression, as she didn’t figure out the pedals at all, and forward locomotion was dependent on either pushing with her feet, or having Leo push her with the rod attached to the back of the tricycle.

This next picture may convey more fully what riding was like. Notice particularly the feet.

Margaret also thought that she should take a turn pushing the trike.

And that went

about as well as could be expected. So she decided that Leo pushing her was really the way to go.

Also, we took Ellie out for a walk. But we bundled her up well, since it was quite cold.

I think she enjoyed it. Or at least didn’t notice anything different from her usual existence, since she was bundled up so well.

*This is not actually meant to be a nag, Ron, but as I write it, I realize that it could work as one. Anyway, if you choose to read it that way, there’s nothing I can do about it. Oh, and thanks for making Margaret’s cake and taking the pictures and helping me get the house ready for the baby.

**We housesat for them over the summer when they went off to Africa, and Margaret had figured out how to break out of all the containment mechanisms that we had at our disposal. I was feeling crummy and pregnant and not like chasing her all over the house, so I got her a bike to slow her down and keep her away from coffee tables.

Snuggly Baby Gorilla

2012-02-09T18:09:00.001-08:00

In the evenings, I feed Ellie and go to bed, and Leo stays up with her for a little while.

We developed this system with Margaret, who would eat, and then stay up for another hour wanting to be held. Ellie seems (so far, knock wood, sacrifice a chicken to whoever out there might a) have some power over the sleep schedule of our infant and b) wants a chicken) to be more likely to go to sleep, so really our system is just netting us some super-cute pictures and getting Leo some important baby-snuggling time.

But it’s a really cute picture.

Literally

2012-02-09T18:05:00.001-08:00

Ellie has done something wonderful for me. She’s allowed me to use a phrase usually used metaphorically in a literal fashion, and it makes me very, very happy.

Here is the baby surveying the world with a slightly jaundiced eye.

And here, with less eye, but more of the sense of what people mean when they speak of surveying things with a jaundiced eye.

And then, with less seeming irritation, but more eye again.

Anyway, although she was slightly jaundiced when she left the hospital, it has resolved itself without any intervention from anyone, and so she has been slowly fading into whatever her natural color is. Her hands and legs are her normal color, but her face, and particularly her eyes, are still a little on the yellow side.

But the important thing is that over the last week, when she has seemed unimpressed with us (as she often has; after all, our house, while certainly more spacious, is not as cuddly and comforting as her previous domicile), I have been able to refer to her as surveying the world with a slightly jaundiced eye, and it’s been true.

And that makes up for the several mornings when we had to take her to hospitals for blood draws and whatnot. Absolutely.

More Driving

2012-02-09T11:34:00.001-08:00

One of the things that is a sure-fire Margaret pleaser these days is to let her sit in the driver’s seat of the car. She thinks driving is the best thing ever, and an ideal end to Mommy and Margaret play time in the backyard in the afternoon (where we kick balls around and frolic).

And every so often, when I look back at the pictures I’ve taken, I see that she thinks that I need to stop telling her how to drive.

Because she has the mechanics down just fine. I mean, she knows where the keys go. See?

Thinking Great Thoughts

2012-02-09T11:15:00.001-08:00

When you’re contemplating this deeply, you don’t have the time to wipe the milk off your chin.

I figure she should have international monetary policy all sorted by the end of the week. Unfortunately, no one knows what her gurgles mean.

Child Labor

2012-02-08T07:41:00.001-08:00

You know, you ask the kids to do a little bit of work around the house, and do they ever actually do it?

No.

And they give you some lame excuse about not being able to control their neck sufficiently to stand up and do the laundry.

Humph.

Awake

2012-02-07T18:50:00.001-08:00

Ellie’s starting to have longer periods of lucidity.* And, although the midnight until 2 period of wakefulness still exists, it’s not her only awake time. This afternoon, while Margaret had her nap, Ellie ate and then stared at me for 40 minutes.

I’m not sure she was impressed.

Also, later on we played charades.

So she’s got that down.

*Well no, not at all, really. She’s not even remotely lucid. But she’s got her eyes open, which is something.

Another Day, Another Hudge

2012-02-07T12:29:00.001-08:00

Although this one was actually more of a lap sitting than a hudge. Margaret hung out on the couch today with Ellie and me, and behaved remarkably well.

She’s really, really good with Ellie. Although I think that when she is playing with the cats at her grandmother’s house, she is told “gently, gently” and encouraged to stroke them softly on the top of the head.

And so that’s what she does with Ellie, which poses it’s own set of problems in that the newborn infant is a bit spongy on the top. But it’s also really, really cute to watch her do it.

Spring Training

2012-02-07T12:25:00.001-08:00

Margaret’s getting ready for the Cardinals’ next season, though she was very upset to learn that Pujols was leaving. We’re working through it, though, so I think that she’ll probably get over her upset.

She’s also very into a book right now by Dr. Seuss, but published before he was illustrating his own books. It’s not top quality Seuss, but it mostly rhymes. And it’s about teeth, which are important to her these days.

She’s been working on categorizing Ellie as a human being, pointing out that Ellie has eyes and she has eyes and Mommy has eyes and Daddy has eyes, and so forth with hair and hands and feet and tummies and ears and mouths and whatnot. But she was shocked today to discover that Ellie didn’t have any teeth. And when it was explained to her that teeth were something you got when you were a big girl,* she was excited by the difference. Because, you know, as nice as it is to know that your little sister is a human being, presumably you want the important differences between you to be observed.

*Which actually must be depressing for most of my male readership, as it suggests that either they haven’t got teeth, or they are big girls.

Hudging

2012-02-06T18:49:00.001-08:00

Margaret has gone from not putting endings on words (hot, for example, was ha! for a long time) to the other extreme of putting more ending on words than is strictly necessary. So bed becomes bedge, sad becomes sadge, and hug becomes hudge.

She has also figured out that hugging works as a delaying tactic, but that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, she loves to hudge the baby. This is the night I came out of the hospital.

And later that night, both wearing their monkey pajamas.

(And yes, there may have been some minor pacifier theft involved).

She’s adjusting to Ellie remarkably well, and is in fact more upset by the fact that I can’t lift her up than anything else.

In Which Margaret’s Mommy Encourages Bad Manners

2012-02-02T19:19:00.001-08:00

There are two rules about good table manners that were drilled into me as a child, and have stuck with me such that every time I break them (even when I’m alone) it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. They are:

1) No reading at the table.

2) No hats at the table.*

I have to admit that my frisson of guilt at reading at the table is probably spurious, because my mother was trying to keep us from reading at the table when there were other people there, and I only read when I’m having a meal alone. And in general, I agree with my mother’s theory that reading at the table when there are other people eating there is rather rude, and thus something that one ought not to do.

But the other day, Margaret hopped up in the big girl chair for some fish,** noticed that there was a book on the table, and discovered a whole new world of wonderful.

I thought about telling her that it was rude (and it was; she had insisted that I sit down with her, though I was having neither fish nor milk. I feel that in that situation, she has a responsibility to make polite conversation with me). But also I was very, very proud that books were important enough to her that she wanted to read at the table. And – her mother fondly hopes – she won’t limit her compulsive reading to books alone. I’m imagining a future of reading the ingredients off of cereal boxes (seriously, does anyone actually know what riboflavin is?), the fine print on junk mail, and whatever else there is lying around the table.

And so I let her read and ignore me.

On the bright side, she did include me in her reading by demanding, as soon as I out the camera down, that I read the book aloud to her. So there’s that.

*This rule is completely unimportant to this blog post. We have had no cause to impose any limits on Margaret’s hat-wearing.

**Which I gave her last week for the first time since she disdained them about a year ago. Let me just say that her attitude toward the goldfish cracker has altered radically. She is a big fan.

Prepping for the Baby

2012-02-02T18:16:00.001-08:00

(This post is late, as Ellie is already here, but I have some time in the evenings to catch up on blog posts that I didn’t write when I was cooking vats and vats and vats of red sauce so that we would have food to balance on top of Ellie over the next few weeks.)

Anyway, one of the things that we needed to do was get some of the baby gear out of storage and make sure that it was all ready to go. Make sure, for example, that all the cat hair had been properly removed.

You see that this is a valid concern.

Anyway, Margaret was very interested in the preparations, and was quite helpful.*

I had explained that the carseat went in the car, and we took the base outside, switched Margaret’s seat to the other side (because otherwise, no one will be able to fit inside the car to drive it, which makes cars less useful than one might imagine), and fitted it in.

But Margaret wanted the seat in the car, because as she explained, “seat fit a car.”

So I took it out, snapped it into the base, and we went to run errands.

But first, Margaret felt that a seat that had straps and buckles NEEDED something in it because otherwise, what’s the point of having a seat in the car?**

And that’s how this happened.

So Margaret, even though she feels pretty secure in her own position vis-à-vis Leo and I, may feel that Ellie is displacing her penguin. And that’s the sort of thing that I think she’s just going to have to put up with.

*In order for this sentence to be truthful, we have to employ a somewhat specialized definition of helpful, which involves poking and prodding and misusing all the equipment, as well as sitting in all the things that could be sat in and sometimes trying to lift them up and put them on her head. You know, that kind of help. As I believe, however, that it is very important to give credit where credit is due, I need to point out that Margaret was very good at helping test that the buckles are still in working order. As far as her product testing goes, she can report that they all do up, but undoing them requires assistance.

**This is a very fair point, and one that I considered making to her when she demanded that we put the seat in the car even though we had, as yet, no baby to stick in it.

Working Hard

2012-02-02T17:37:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, after a hard day of sleeping and eating, it is important to sleep with one’s arms in a triumphant position.

Sometimes it is also important to point out to one’s mommy that she is an ineffective swaddler.

Because it’s never too early to point out how people could improve their performance.

In my defense, these are small blankets, I’m trying to do the swaddling on the bed, and my waist still doesn’t bend as well as I would like because there is a recently-stitched baby-size hole in it. (And no, I don’t think that I’m being overly defensive about imagined slights).

All Right Then

2012-02-02T08:18:00.001-08:00

Margaret has been somewhat slow to warm to Ellie. I mean, she’s not exactly opposed to her, but she’s not exactly gung-ho on the concept.

And she hasn’t wanted to have much to do with her.

But this morning Leo and I showed Margaret her baby pictures (well, not all of them. That would take far too long), and she seemed to warm to Ellie a bit. And certainly enough that she was finally willing to get close enough to touch her.*

And she learned her name.

*I also think that the fact that I am wearing pants and behaving somewhat more like a normal human being is helping with this, but I may be rating my own attractions too highly. Whatever it means to Margaret, pants are a big thing for me.

Chicks and Geese and Ducks and Penguins

2012-02-02T08:08:00.001-08:00

Ellie is asleep in her bucket (seriously, hospitals stick babies in rubbermaid tubs. I’m sure that’s safe sleep), so I’m going to take this opportunity to catch up on some of the blogging that I should have been doing last week instead of tearing around doing fun things so that Margaret could enjoy her last week of being an only child. Of course, most of the subject matter of this post is the stuff that we were doing for fun, so if I hadn’t been tearing around, I wouldn’t have had anything to post about, so there’s a bit of a conundrum there.*

Anyway, one of the things that Margaret really likes is going and feeding ducks and geese in Forest Park. On a really cold day (of which there have been none, really, in the last week or so) she will settle for looking at geese and ducks out the car window. But she prefers to feed them. Actually, what she prefers is for Mommy to feed them while she munches away on her own piece of slightly stale duck bread.

She has also learned, thanks to a helpful book on barnyard animals, to distinguish mommy and daddy and baby ducks, which is very cute. She, as nature intended, seems to think that the daddy ducks are more interesting. Or at least she talks about them more. Except that we went on the carousel at the zoo, and she rode on a goose figure that she rather thought was a mommy duck. So that has been figuring in her conversation.

Another thing that she likes to do is demand songs from me. Mostly songs about ducks, when it really comes down to it. And she does it by title, though a certain degree of discernment is required to unpack which possible duck song, out of all the duck songs in the world, she is wanting me to sing. In the following clip, she asks for the “geese and duck song,” which is a verse from “Surrey with a Fringe on Top” announcing that those fowl, along with some chicks, ought to scurry.

Other duck songs are “ducky song,” which is “Rubber Ducky,” and “duckling song,” which is the relevant verse from “Clementine” about driving ducklings to the water. Sometimes she asks for “duckling and boot song,” which is two verses: the one about the ducks, and the one about Clementine’s enormous feet.***

Another favorite bird- and park-related activity was going to see the penguins. We have many videos of penguins swimming, but this seems to be Margaret’s favorite.

*Also, Ellie** decided that she needed to eat A LOT last night, and that she was against being put down, so I have a really good excuse for slightly scatty prose. I usually need an excuse, but right now I have one, so I’d like it to be noted.

**My mother has noted, apropos of the great nickname debates that raged with Margaret, that we now have kids that we can call El and M. Apparently we need an N, and O, and a P. I’m not, at this moment, seeing that in my future.

***I was singing her the whole song, since she liked it, but then I decided that it wasn’t a great idea to try to allay her fears about her baby sister by singing her songs in which younger sisters wait until one has drowned, and then swoop in and steal one’s boyfriend. It didn’t seem to create the right sort of attitude towards little sisters. And the more you read between the lines, the more the little sister looks like a poor prospect. I mean, why doesn’t SHE take the ducklings to the water some of the time? What’s she doing when not stealing men?

Why God Made Uncles

2012-02-01T18:39:00.001-08:00

So that there would be someone to let the nieces and nephews do the damn fool things that their parents know they shouldn’t do.

Speaking of which, Ron let Margaret drive the car up the driveway the other day.

She thought it was pretty awesome, but probably illicit.

She has been looking at the pictures of this event on my phone over and over and over and cackling with joy about it.

Speaking of uncles, Ellie finds them quite comfortable.

Dubious Acceptance

2012-02-01T18:35:00.001-08:00

Margaret isn’t completely certain that she’s on board with this little sister thing that we’ve got going on.

I mean, she hasn’t thrown the baby out of a window yet, but she isn’t all that interested in holding the baby.

Nor is she particularly interested in the fact that I am in bed all the time. Although she seemed much happier this afternoon when I got up and staggered down the halls with her.

But there was a very sweet moment when Margaret and Grandma read nursery rhymes to Ellie.

Margaret is concentrating very hard on the precise meanings of the poems.

In Which We Try To Find Apt Winnie-The Pooh References

2012-02-01T18:24:00.001-08:00

You know, because it’s kind of a thing that we do when we announce the birth of our daughters.

Anyway, you’ll get to the Winnie the Pooh reference if you stick around long enough.

To start with, we have another baby, Kathleen Elizabeth Human (called Ellie)*

This is what she thinks of us.

Or perhaps this.

At any rate, she is surveying the world with a certain amount of distrust.

Although, if there is any milk around, she wouldn’t be averse to having some, since her internal clock is perpetually stopped at a little before 11.**

*It was a last-minute compromise which allows both of us to save face.

**See, there’s Winnie the Pooh.

All Grown Up

2012-01-26T12:13:00.001-08:00

Well, at least to the point of looking like someone going to school.

Or someone snagging the car keys and taking off without permission.

Last One For A While

2012-01-26T11:59:00.001-08:00

I’m realizing that being sad as Margaret grows out of baby things is, in my current condition, dumb.

But on Sunday, she took what I think will probably be her last nap on top of mommy for a while.

It was very snuggly and sweet. And probably terribly, horribly bad for discipline as we try to train her to take naps in her own bed without tearing the place apart. But sweet and snuggly.

Uncles Have The Best Toys

2012-01-26T11:38:00.001-08:00

Ron has figured out the way to Margaret’s heart.

Luckily, for those of you who were hoping to worm your way into her good graces, it’s fairly easy. All you need are a variety of electronic devices.

She may start off eyeing you suspiciously, as in the above photo, but as she realizes that you have all kinds of toys, and you’re going to let her play with them, her look will turn to this

and finally this.

It just requires an expensive phone and tablet device. And a willingness to put them in the grubby fingers of a toddler.

Penguin’s Soup Party

2012-01-26T11:31:00.001-08:00

Margaret got a stove and dishes and food for Christmas, and this has set off a mania for cooking and feeding people.* It is specifically a fixation with cooking and serving soup to those people she deems appropriately receptive. The other night, she refused to serve Leo any imaginary soup because of some nameless transgression of his.

She has also developed a fixation with a series of penguins.

There are, according to Margaret, a daddy penguin (enormous), a mommy penguin (medium), and a Margaret penguin (small). I see that in the next few days, I need** to find either a very small penguin, or one between medium and enormous. So large.

When she brings these two fixations together (which happens fairly often) she feeds the penguins.

She also does this without any clothes on, which makes it a little weirder, but who among us hasn’t hosted a naked dinner party for a penguin which was bigger than ourselves?

*There’s definitely something wrong with that. She doesn’t cook people, as far as I know, but I figure that taking time to fix the sentence will eat up more time than I have, since I am writing this while Margaret plays, and she may at any moment decide that I need to stop. Of course, I’ve wasted all this time writing a footnote, so I might as well have fixed the first sentence, but going back is just throwing good moments after bad, and there’s no reason to do that, now is there?

**We’re using a somewhat specialized definition of “need” here.

She’s Always Been A Woman For Arranging Things

2012-01-26T06:59:00.001-08:00

So Margaret has begun to get interested in music with pictures attached, and so I have been showing her clips of musicals occasionally.

And yesterday, I showed her the opening song from Hello Dolly!, and I think that she took the message to heart.

At least, she’s been demanding things be done her way, and she has been arranging furniture.

[Here is the second introductory part of the story. You kind of need both halves to make it make sense]

Margaret has also been getting very excited about her room. We have moved in a chest of drawers, so she can’t get at her clothes, and we removed pretty much everything else except the bed, and, of course, her ENORMOUS BEAR.

The problem is that she really likes playing in her room (which means taking her stuffed animals off the bed and putting them on the floor, and then putting them back on the bed and admonishing them to “sit down on bedge.” Not that she hears that any too often, of course.

But she wants me to play with her. And the bed has rails around it, so it’s not precisely easy to get in and out of, or comfortable to sit on when one is in it. So I have to sit on the floor, which is a position which in my current condition is NOT COMFORTABLE. Also, getting up is a bit tricky, since I am, as discussed previously, bearing a striking resemblance to a lumbering watercraft.

The solution was to put a chair in her room. So this morning, I maneuvered it down the stairs, pushed it into her room, put the cushions on it, and collapsed into it.

Margaret came over, pulled on my arm, and said “Out. Mamat room. Mamat chair.” And then suggested that I move the thing over a few feet.

Sorry for the quality of the picture. I was taking it quickly.

Multitasking

2012-01-26T06:26:00.001-08:00

Margaret is reading up a storm. Last night, while we were changing her diaper for bed, she was saying “Don’t garden; father pie” which is her synopsis of the salient points of Peter Rabbit.* Sometimes, though, this fascination becomes a problem.

Coming in from the car the other day, she was reading her book, you know, like you do.

When she ran into an obstacle – the stairs.

She stopped short.***

She stared into the middle distance, before turning to me for help.

It’s really all very cute, if a little nerve-wracking, since I don’t want either Margaret or the books to sustain any damage. Particularly since the Beatrix Potter books are briefly out of print at the moment. The publisher is retouching the illustrations or something and rereleasing them slowly. You know, to build up excitement. Which is why I got an email from Amazon announcing Beatrix Potter’s NEW BOOK. The Tale of Jeremy Fisher. Humph.

*The exact** quotation is “Don’t go into Mr. Macgregor’s garden. Your father had an accident there; he was put into a pie by Mrs. Macgregor.”

**Well, as far as I can remember, and I don’t want to get up and go get the book, because it will remind Margaret that I am here, and she will want me to read the book, and then you won’t get a new post, which you wouldn’t like, would you?

*** But only compared to adults. Compared to other 2-year-olds, she’s quite tall, actually.

Fashion Forward?

2012-01-26T06:13:00.001-08:00

Margaret has been anti-pants lately. She’s been both very interested in dresses, and also interested in wearing nothing on her legs. The other night, she told me that her plan for the evening was “Daddy a work [get Daddy from work], drive home, pants off, dance.” This isn’t such a bad plan, honestly. I mean, I frequently want to go home, change into comfortable pants, and listen to music, but all Margaret’s pants are comfortable, so I’m not sure why the desire to run around in nothing but a diaper.

Actually, I lie. Sometimes she does want something other than a diaper.

You know, like a hat.

Or a pair of heels.

Which go nicely with the Winnie-the-Pooh logo on her diaper.

Driving Miss Daisy

2012-01-20T10:59:00.001-08:00

Since switching Margaret’s car seat around to it’s forward-facing position, I have had to cope with the fact that she is far more interested in the mechanics of driving than she was when she couldn’t see them.

I suppose that this is hardly surprising, really.

Anyway, she has begun to give me advice about my driving, like excitedly shouted instructions such as “Yight, Mommy! Go, go, go!” When I point out that red lights mean stop, she nods and says sagely “geen go.”

She has also developed a deep love of driving by herself. Of course, she understands driving to be a somewhat different process than the rest of us might consider it. In her mind, it tends to involve adjusting the mirrors

and honking the horn.

But that’s really most of the fun anyway, isn’t it? She also likes turning on the hazard lights, but all the pictures of that were exceptionally blurry.

Daddy Blocks

2012-01-11T11:23:00.001-08:00

Or “Someone in this house buys the clothes and is stuck in a rut.” Though I would like to point out that I am not actually trying to dress my husband and my daughter in matching clothing, but sometimes it works out that way.*

Anyway, Margaret is big into building with blocks, though she likes tall towers, and so sometimes prefers to take a more supervisory role.

And she’s discovered that on the weekends, her father is a somewhat easy mark for block building.**

This makes her happy.

But sometimes she gets a little too bossy, and starts interfering with his vision of a tower that has blocks in it

and the whole thing devolves into roughhousing

with snuggles at the end.

*My daughter, however, certainly is. She has discovered that she is the proud owner of a “hat-shirt,” or hooded sweatshirt, to those of you who don’t speak Margaret, and has begun to demand that she be allowed to wear it, and that Leo and I wear our hooded sweatshirts as well. She’s very certain that either we should all have them on, or no one should have them on. What she’s going to do when she realizes that the baby has no hatshirt, I shudder to think, I really do.

** I do a decent amount of it myself, but in my current nebulously barge-shaped condition, hanging out on the floor is less fun than you would think.

Helping Mommy

2012-01-10T13:06:00.001-08:00

I feel that I am beginning to resemble a barge. And not a sleek, easy-to-manage barge, but rather one which needs a lot of steering and horsepower and at this point my lack of knowledge as to how barges actually work is becoming a problem. I sort of have in my head, from overexposure to nineteenth-century British children’s literature, that barges are pulled up and down locks by horses, but I’m almost certain that that information is out of date. At any rate, I am beginning to feel like a large and unwieldy watercraft.

Margaret is being reasonably obliging. I mean, she prefers to be carried, but she is willing to walk in on her own from the car, and yesterday, when I was bringing some groceries in, she showed herself to be a very helpful person.

Unfortunately, the end of this helpfulness was to chuck the bag of potstickers down the stairs, but she started off on the right foot, so that’s something, certainly.

Mommy Books

2012-01-10T12:55:00.001-08:00

I’ve started teaching a literature class, which has completely revolutionized Margaret’s world. She’s very used to me reading things, but I tend to read on my kindle, or my computer, or my kindle app for my phone, so she doesn’t recognize what I’m doing as reading books.

But when I am teaching, I like to scribble notes to myself in the books, to remind myself of important things in the text (and to make it easier to find useful quotations in class, because it makes me look so much more knowledgeable). This has led to a number of mornings where I sit in the living room and read books while Margaret plays.

Which means that Margaret has gotten interested in my books.

Of course, she – like every other person who reads Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – has to make a choice between original text and translation.

She opted for the original text.

And so she began reading.

Also, when she finds them on the floor or on the table or in my bag or on a shelf, she picks them up and brings them to me, saying “Mommy book.” This is good, because since she learned that she has a name – “Marmar,” but with very swallowed Rs, so it sounds suspiciously like Mama, which is what she calls her grandmother, not to be confused with Mommy, which is me – she has been trotting around the world naming things and attaching herself to them. Marmar has milk and chairs and stuffed animals and all sorts of things that belong to her.

And the Shoes

2012-01-04T11:30:00.001-08:00

Margaret has been developing certain sartorial habits which I find difficult to approve. For example, a few weeks ago, I was putting a red shirt on her, and she said “No. Pink shirt. On.”

Inside, I died a little.

It’s not that I have anything against pink.* What I do object to is the theory that little girls must wear pink at every moment of every day as long as they live. And that said pink attire must be emblazoned with slogans to which I object. Gymboree’s mistake in that department caused me to consider trying to get one of my more artistic friends to cooperate to design a line of girls t-shirts that don’t buy into the idea that girls are supposed to be ornamental and nothing else.**

Anyway, imagine my chagrin when Margaret learned to identify pink, and then to demand it.

And then the other morning, she not only got a pink shirt – well, pink-ish – but she decided to dress her jeans up with a pair of heels.

Luckily, she was tippy enough in the shoes that she had to walk slowly, and I got a picture.

And then, just to add a final straw to my camelious back***, I tried to get her interested in putting lotion on her poor, dry skin by letting her see that I do it when I wear makeup, and now she’s taken to demanding that I put on makeup. There’s nothing more depressing than getting beauty tips from a toddler. Particularly ones that are more or less justified.

*All right, I do. I don’t really like it and I never have. But I have no objection to other people wearing it. My mother wears it all the time, and I still speak to her. Most of the time.

**Allie, if you see this and you’re interested, give me a call. I've got another possible collaborative project as well. And yes, I could send an email or call or something, but I’m writing this now and thinking of it, and I’m having a baby in the next month, which causes me to be both busy and scatterbrained.

***I know, my hump is on the wrong side, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel like a camel. Just now, it crossed my mind that I should be organizing baby clothes instead of writing blog posts for you, and I looked that thought firmly in the eye and said “humph” to it.

Sandwiches Redux

2012-01-04T06:33:00.001-08:00

I think that Margaret has either inherited her grandfather’s complete lack of tastebuds* or is a culinary innovator of some impressiveness.

We discussed, earlier this week, her penchant for making sandwiches out of pieces of wood. She has also begun making sandwiches with whatever she finds at hand in other contexts.

And she has, for the past few weeks, had a love affair with oranges. She prefers clementines, but she’ll eat any orange. And she’ll ask for it by name. Previously, her word for orange was “oh-no,” which invested the whole eating process with an air of impending doom. Recently, however, she has learned to enunciate a little more, and now she asks for an “oranCH.” So our breakfasts for quite some time have consisted of “oranCHes” and also some bread and butter. Margaret would be content with just the butter, but I like her to have the bread for the look of the thing.**

Anyway, the other morning, she got inventive.

I can only assume that this is her low(er)-fat, sugar-free version of the classic Nell Gwynn’s Buttered Oranges. And while I am, of course, impressed that she is innovating classic English dessert recipes***, I’m not sure that Nell Gwynn is an appropriate role model for my daughter. On the one hand, I would like her to be pioneering and feminist and all those things, so Nell Gwynn’s position as one of the first English actresses is laudable. On the other hand, I really don’t want her to be the mistress of the King of England.

On the bright side, she thought that she had made an orange sandwich (or “oranCH sanniCH,” if you prefer the original pronunciation), so perhaps my worries are unfounded.

*Maternal grandfather, and those of you who haven’t eaten things that he cooks may think I’m being needlessly cruel, but those of you who have know that the sort of man who is willing to mix plain yogurt and the leavings from a dill pickle jar, and call it salad dressing, or sauté tuna fish and salsa and make children eat it for breakfast is a man whose tastebuds were clearly shot off in the war.

**On mornings when the butter comes from the fridge, and so is hard, she just peels it off the bread and eats it in chunks. She then eats the bread, but I still feel there’s something a little off in this performance. And when the butter is soft, she licks the butter off the bread first, and then eats the bread.

***For those of you who haven’t had this delightful treat, it is essentially an orange-flavored mousse that is made with some butter to replace some of the cream one would use in chocolate mousse. It’s quite nice, if you ignore the fact that you’re eating orange juice mixed with butter.

Nana Blanket

2012-01-04T06:09:00.001-08:00

Margaret is a child who understands the importance of keeping on the good side of people.

Now most of you, who have met my mother, and think that she’s a kind, sweet, wonderful person, might not see the importance of keeping on her good side.

And I say that that is because most of you have not crossed her. I mean, she spends most of her time being nice and kind and sweet and wonderful, and collecting waifs and strays and taking them to church and feeding them and looking after her grandchildren.

But every so often – not very often, but occasionally – when someone has done something terrible,* my mother can transform herself into a giant, fire-breathing, three-headed dragon.

Margaret, though she has never seen this occur, is a very perceptive child, and so no doubt understands the peril in which she stands if she were to go into bad umpiring. Or neglect to express proper appreciation for presents that her Nana sent her.

Which brings us, in a roundabout and long-winded sort of a way, to the subject of this post: Margaret’s Nana blanket.

For Christmas, my mother knitted her fingers to the bone, and made each of us a blanket.** They are really nice. Margaret, in particular, demands hers every night.*** (Incidentally, as another additional part of this story, I got a comfy rocking chair for Christmas. This will help those of you who keep track of what furniture belongs in our living room. I know most of you do that. Because we’re that interesting).

She likes to have her Nana blanket and rock. And she likes to have her daddy sit with her and read her a book about the steps that the bunny from Pat the Bunny takes as he prepares for bed.

And then she likes to come to the couch, read Goodnight Moon with both of us, and be carried off to bed with her twenty-seven books, her four favored stuffed animals, and now her Nana blanket.

Also, if you pay attention to the sleepers, you can see that these pictures were taken on different nights, so although I do a reasonable amount of embellishment in these posts – I don’t, for example, think that Margaret actually knows the etymology of the word manger – I have not embellished this narrative at all.****

*If, for example, an umpire were to have the temerity to call a third strike on Ben. You know, offenses of that magnitude.

** Which we each appreciate greatly, although I hold that Leo’s is proportionally larger than mine. But I like to complain. Besides, mine matches Margaret’s, which is cooler than being larger. So humph.

***Leo uses his every night too, though he hasn’t gotten into the habit of screaming “Nana blanket! Nana blanket” before bed. He might, however, were we to arrange his life so that he had no control over his bedding. It would be an interesting experience.

****Well, I may have exaggerated a little about the whole transforming into a dragon thing, but not much.

Riding in Cars with Boys

2012-01-03T06:23:00.001-08:00

Over Christmas, Margaret met (well, met again. But she didn’t really remember it from the last time, so I think it counts as met) her second cousin Conor.

She thought this was pretty cool. We were talking him up, so before she met him, we went on Facebook and looked at pictures of him, and she learned to say his name. He’s five, so he probably doesn’t appreciate that this is a rather impressive compliment she paid him.

Anyway, the first place we went with him was a model train exhibition.

He was completely enthralled.

Margaret was less impressed.

Margaret went home a little early, as the three adults she had brought with her were not up to chasing her down.

The second time they got together, however, we picked a more congenial atmosphere for Margaret. The zoo is a little less dependent on an interest in trains.

The Children’s Zoo has some really interesting exhibits, some cool animals, and also a toy jeep. So they hung out in the toy jeep.

But Margaret was very polite. She let Conor drive (which was good, because I think he would have been offended had she insisted on taking the wheel), and listened very intently as he explained things like shifting and how radios worked.

And she only looked bored with his unceasing flow of transportation-related facts when he was occupied with driving.

Sandwiches

2012-01-03T06:11:00.001-08:00

Margaret got a stove and a table for Christmas, and I realize that I have actually built her a very nice studio apartment in the far end of our living room. So really, she can move out anytime, provided she defines moving out as moving into the far end of the living room and continuing to sleep in her bed, since that is one thing we don’t have in that area.*

As part of the stove gift, she got a food set. It’s actually rather a clever set-up. There are slices of things that all attach to each other with velcro, so even a somewhat uncoordinated sandwich-stacker can achieve impressive results.

One slight hitch is that after she makes these sandwiches (and there are many sandwiches – or slices of pizza, which is a story for another day – made each day) she brings them to me so that I can sample them and give my opinion. But they’re made out of wood, which makes them less palatable than the cereal she throws on the floor during meals and then scavenges for me later in the day.**

Luckily, usually the comment “Margaret try it” has the desired result.

Now I’ve just got to figure out of chewing on blocks of wood is good or bad for her teeth.

*Speaking of moving out, she seems to have been watching Home Alone on the sly, and then thinking about it in her sleep, because when I went into her room last night, she had the moves down.

** She’s really very thoughtful, if a little unhygienic.

Christmas Failure

2011-12-31T18:51:00.001-08:00

I’m afraid that I have done a poor job explaining the rudiments of Christmas to Margaret. First, her grandmother showed her the various actors in the Christmas story, and she got a wee bit confused.

She learned to identify the mommy and the daddy and the baby and the bird-person, and the shepherd with the pipe (“toot-toot.”)*

But she decided that the manger was a plate, which either suggests that she understands transubstantiation, and has a much better grasp of Catholic theology than we anticipated, or she knows that a manger is called a manger because it is a word with French roots, and manger means eat in French. Or, possibly, she knows that mangers are plates for farm animals, and is far more concerned about the well-being of the cow and the donkey than of the baby. At any rate, I feel that I didn’t do a good job explaining, particularly when she did this with our kid-friendly nativity.

Our second Christmas-related failure of communication occurred every time I showed her a picture of Santa. She would point excitedly at him and say “Fwank!”

So Margaret’s view of Christmas is that we eat baby Jesus, and her grandfather dresses up in a funny red suit and gives her presents.

We’ll try again next year.

*I’m aware that the pipe-playing shepherd is not precisely canonical, but Margaret’s grandmother’s crèche has one, and Margaret likes it.

Reading In Bed

2011-12-31T18:34:00.001-08:00

Since last we discussed Margaret’s sleeping and reading habits, we have altered her sleeping arrangements. She now sleeps in a twin bed* with covers. And every night I go in before I go to bed so that I can put the covers back on her, and this is what I find.

We’ve been trying to cut down on the number of books she brings to bed, but she really does like to read until she falls asleep.

In the days when she was refusing to nap in her bed, there were a few afternoons when I drove her around to bore her to death, and she refused to be parted from her “duck book.”

I’m glad that she loves books, but I do worry that she likes to sleep covered in them. Or, more often, on them. It can’t be comfortable or good for her neck.

*For a good while, she slept in it for her nap as well as at night, but then she figured out that she could get out, so we have put her back in her crib for her naps. This was not a popular decision.

Big Sister Practice Again

2011-12-31T18:19:00.001-08:00

Margaret is big into helping other entities swing. We went to the park several weeks ago, and she took her kitty cat* with her and treated him to quite a good time.

And she didn’t let her solicitous behavior stop at the swings. She let the kitty listen to the sound of the American alligator.

And she let the kitty watch her drive the playground around.

And when, after an hour of tearing about the playground like a thing demented, she collapsed on the ground, she let the kitty lie there with her.

If my recollection is correct, little sisters are primarily valued for their ability to comprise a silent audience, so she’s certainly beginning as she means to go on.

*Incidentally, this kitty cat was intended for the top of her stocking, but it didn’t work out. I learned that it isn’t possible to take her with me when I do her Christmas shopping, which was no doubt an important lesson to learn.

In A Tight Spot

2011-12-31T18:08:00.001-08:00

Margaret has developed an intriguing habit of climbing into small boxes.*

And she does this an awful lot.

She manages to extract herself, though. Usually.

I do worry a bit about the Sylvia Plath impression with the oven, but luckily we haven’t had it hooked up to the gas, so she won’t get very far.

*Perhaps it isn’t that intriguing, but it is awfully cute.

Cloning

2011-12-31T18:00:00.001-08:00

I realized a few weeks ago that Margaret is turning into a small copy of my mother.

Part of it is the clothing – my mother wears a lot of red turtlenecks (or the same red turtleneck a lot; I haven’t thought to ask for illumination on that point). And part of it is the haircut. But a lot of it is just that they look alike.

This can become unfortunate. For example, when my small mother clone is doing something she shouldn’t – like standing on the furniture, for example –

one can’t just say firmly “Margaret, stop that this instant,” because she looks like one’s mother, and one only rarely speaks that way to one’s mother.

So it can be difficult. My solution – and thus my New Year’s resolution* – is to speak sharply to my mother more often.

*Actually, my New Year’s resolution is to blog more often. Hopefully once a day. But more often. I imagine that the smaller person will give me more material, while at the same time taking away time I’ve allocated.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-16T19:21:00.001-08:00

(First, I’ve been exceptionally dilatory about this blog, and I apologize. I will do better in future. I am currently wearing sackcloth and ashes, which is good because sackcloth is awfully accommodating of bulging midsections, but bad because it’s exceptionally hard on the upholstery).

Anyway, today I learned an important lesson. It is, for those of you who are interested, an EXCEPTIONALLY BAD IDEA to go to a photo place to get pictures taken the week before Christmas, because you will meet with hordes of people, all of whom have waited for the week before Christmas to get their pictures taken, and the atmosphere is frantic and full of children who are having their hair brushed for the 17th time, and would rather not.*

It took us 2 hours to get the pictures done.

2 hours.

Ugh.

Margaret had to get her game face on for it.

Luckily for this year’s Christmas card, she took her game face off after just a moment.

By the end of the ordeal, however, she was feeling quite tired.

Posing is hard work, you know, particularly when RIGHT OUTSIDE the place you’re posing, there is a LEGO TABLE and people are playing at it, making a mess of all the Legos that she had just tidied up.

Before she ran out of steam, though, we got some good pictures.

Here she is in “standing in front of the Christmas tree looking gleeful” pose. What she’s really looking gleeful about is that her mother is standing behind the photographer, making mad monkey noises and balancing a plush monkey on her head while dancing up and down.

We then moved to a chair, which she had been eying for a while. When we went in, she went and sat in it and had to be separated from it for the first round of pictures. And it is a pretty cool chair, and just her size.

We then moved to a “lying on the floor looking at a book” pose.

The problem with this one was that Margaret wanted to read the book, which meant that we had some trouble getting her to look at the camera, and when we had gotten shots that would work, she wasn’t done reading yet. Life is very hard.

So they tried to distract her with fake milk and cookies and a weird Santa arm. And here’s how that one went":

Cookies and milk? For me? How kind.

Hmmm, this milk seems to be stuck to the plate. This is tricky.

Hey, this milk is a fake! What the heck, Santa?

We moved on to profile pictures. In this one, I’m making boinging noises with my mouth while pulling my ears out from the side of my head.

And she pointed and laughed at me.

Then, wardrobe change.

This thing with her hands, she just did. Good job posing.

And having figured it out, she stuck with it.

After this, we put her into ordinary clothes, and let her organize the lego table while I picked out which pictures to print. Next year I’m doing Christmas pictures in July, when no one is there.

*I had an appointment for the week after Thanksgiving, but then Margaret began an interesting project of smacking herself in the face every so often. I try to send out Christmas cards without visible facial bruising. It’s one of my quirks.

Bookworm

2011-11-16T17:16:00.001-08:00

Since I knew I was pregnant with Margaret, I have been convinced that I wanted her to love reading. In fact, instead of going out and buying booties or small onesies or what have you to celebrate that I was pregnant, I ordered the complete Beatrix Potter oeuvre, as well as A.A. Milne’s poems and Winnie the Pooh books.

I have read to her a lot, but it is only recently that she has started to listen to me, or indeed sit still while I do it. And then in the last week or two, she has really developed an attachment to books.

This is her in bed tonight.

And this is what bedtime has become. We read Goodnight Moon last, and she carries it in with her, but she also wants a little book that she can manage better. Because, you know, she wants to read it after we leave. In the dark.

But if you listen carefully, you can hear her turning the pages.

And in case you think that this was a one-off, posed picture, here she is two days ago going down for her nap.

She also knows how to ask for her favorite books: “Shush” (mush to the rest of us) is Goodnight Moon. She wants that one a lot. Which is why we own 3 copies, because she wants one for bed (sometimes 2 – board and regular paper) and one for the car. I like to have a surplus in case one gets left somewhere. She also ask for “Rawr,” which is Where the Wild Things Are. We roar for the pages on which the wild rumpus is happening. “Socks” is Fox in Socks, which she enjoys having read to her. And “Fish” is One Fish, Two Fish. But she really only likes that one on the first few pages when it is talking about fish.

It All Makes Work For The Workingman To Do*

2011-10-27T19:04:00.001-07:00

As noted a few days ago, Margaret is becoming quite interested in leaf management. The bags of leaves have been taken to the fence, but does that stop the wind from blowing more down? No, of course not. But Margaret is there to do her bit.

Of course, it didn’t make much of a dent, because she did that 6 or 7 times, and then decided that she would rather take a walk. But it’s a good beginning. After all, she’s only 21 months old, and that’s probably too young for complete responsibility for yardwork.

Also, Caty, if you read this, Margaret COMPLETELY ADORES that hat. I think it’s the strings. But she wears it around the house all the time.

*For the uneducated among you, here is a link to the song from which this quotation is taken. The lego animation is not original, but makes it more accessible to children, and this is Margaret’s blog, after all.

Hint, Hint

2011-10-27T18:55:00.001-07:00

I mentioned that Margaret likes to push the swing as a suggestion. She does this a lot, and she’s been doing it more and more. Considering that I ~~usually~~ often take her outside so that she can run around and burn off energy so that she will nap properly, this fascination with the swing, lovely though it is, is somewhat counterproductive. She seems to be unaware that the swing is for late afternoons, when she is bored with me but also winding down towards nighttime.

You can see her quietly making her point. There is a swing. Things can go in the swing. Margaret is a thing. Ergo, Margaret could be in the swing.

Here it is again, a day later:

I’m beginning to feel that she may be too much a creature of habit.

Practicing

2011-10-24T19:03:00.001-07:00

I think that Margaret is going to be a good big sister.*

Today, after her nap, she took her doggy outside. And she put him in her swing, and pushed him for a while.

Sometimes, at the park, she pushes the swing when she wants up in it, as a way of suggesting to me that perhaps she could get in on this swinging thing that seems to be going on. I thought that she was subtly suggesting that I could put her in the swing. So I asked her if she wanted up (or, as I find myself saying more often now than I would like to admit, “uppy”). She said “No. Doggy. Whee.” (Whee is her word for swing. Just go with it).

And then, in case I hadn’t quite grasped what was going on, she offered me a synonym: “Woof,” she said, and pointed at the dog.

I’m taking away from this experience two things: she really is getting that words fit together to convey complex concepts (the dog is in the swing, dummy. See? The dog.) and she wants to share things she enjoys with others.

I’m not ridiculously keen on the idea of her putting the baby in the swing, since it will be the middle of the winter. Also, her method of getting the dog in the swing was to cram him through the leg hole, and it took some shoving and some bending. But the impulse is good. So we can hope.

*Provided her little sister does what she’s told with a minimum of fuss and thinking for herself.

Working Hard

2011-10-24T18:52:00.001-07:00

Leaf collecting is so much fun, you know?

And then, after you’ve done ALL THAT WORK, they make you carry the bags of leaves all the way to the curb ALL BY YOURSELF.

The real problem, actually, came when we tried to convince Margaret that she needed to leave the bags of leaves at the curb. She was planning on taking them for a walk to see the neighborhood. I wasn’t particularly optimistic that the bottoms of the bag would last that long, so I forcibly detached her fingers from the handles and abandoned them. It was a very traumatic experience.

She did, however, forgive me, and on our walk, she gave me something that she called “flowers.”

It was very sweet of her, but I am afraid I left them outside when we got home. I’m not sure that putting them in water would have helped them at all.

Margaret In Charge

2011-10-24T07:46:00.001-07:00

The development of language is doing much for Margaret’s ability to shape the world around her. I think that she’s being very careful to develop enough language that she can tell us what she wants, but not enough that we can expect her to understand what we’re trying to tell her. It’s actually a very clever system she’s worked out, because it leads to her getting her way more often than is good for her.

This morning is a good case in point.

She was playing in the living room, and she happened across one of her sweaters. It is a very cute sweater, and I can quite understand her desire to have more to do with it. She came over to me, held it out, and said “Cold. On.” Pausing only briefly to be happy that she had come so far in expressing herself (two words! Strung together! Meaning something sensible!), I put the sweater over her head.

Not. What. She. Wanted.

She howled “Nooooooooooooo! Mommy on!” as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. (Again, let’s pause for the brief swell of pride that she is combining words to make more complex concepts. Also, that she has learned to say Mommy, because she was avoiding it for a very long time).

But here is the problem. She has no sense of size relation. But I do, and I know that her sweater would not fit me. But she was insistent, and does not have the vocabulary to comprehend “too small” and “Mommy will stretch it out” and “This isn’t going to work” and “I’m already wearing a sweater” and “Your Nana will crucify me on the back lawn if I destroy that sweater she made you.”

So we compromised.

And this apparently satisfied her.

I actually blame her Uncle Ron, who taught her that non-hat things can be worn as hats.

Entertaining Adults Is So Tiring

2011-10-22T15:31:00.001-07:00

This afternoon, Margaret and I were playing that fun game where I try to pick up her toys and she tries to play with all of her toys at once, but with special focus on the ones that I have just put away. We were at an impasse. It felt a little like the Somme Offensive, but with less mud and fewer casualties. Also less trenchfoot, as those of you planning on visiting me will be pleased to hear.

At any rate, we were not progressing very fast at all, and I was beginning to think that I was going to have to declare an Armistice and wait for Spring to come and cover over the destroyed carcasses of Margaret’s toys,* when Margaret’s Uncle Ron appeared on the scene, like the Americans.**

He took her outside, and the cleaning progressed. Not horribly quickly, since picking up Margaret’s toys involves bending at the waist, and my bending at the waist capabilities are a little compromised at this particular moment. And before anyone wonders where Leo was, I can assure you that he was occupying the Dardanelles of the kitchen.

Anyway, it appears that all of that anti-cleaning had tired her out.

*Yes, this metaphor is not going to really have a lot of staying power, and I probably need to drop it pretty soon before something disgusting happens.

**Who, as my mother’s Uncle Ron was fond of pointing out, had a habit of showing up late to world wars.

Margaret the Non-rhotic

2011-10-19T07:13:00.001-07:00

I gave Margaret a fork yesterday. It was a mostly successful operation. She seemed to find it easier than a spoon, because once you’ve speared the thing on the fork, you don’t have to hold the utensil level as it comes to your mouth. I don’t think that it’s going to help her eat yogurt, but it will probably make some things easier.

I gave her apple chunks to work with, and Margaret employed a very efficient fork and hand system to convey as many as possible to her mouth as fast as possible. She has immense cheek storage capacity.

Notice how she very politely puts her fork on her plate to signify that she has crammed her mouth as full as she possibly can.

The real difficulty came when I was teaching her to say “fork.” She was very excited by the concept, and so entered into learning the word with a will. Unfortunately, she has difficulty with compound consonant sounds. Luckily, when she tries to say “shirt,” she omits the t. We we not so lucky with “fork.”

So we’re going to be using “utensil” until she figures out the r.

Little Privacy, Guys?

2011-10-16T10:56:00.001-07:00

Bad Hair Day

2011-10-11T18:51:00.001-07:00

Slides can be very difficult, when one has to maintain a certain elegance of one’s coiffure.

Also, Margaret is getting very self-sufficient on the playground. She climbs up the stairs, sits down, and does it All By Herself.

Mommy Gets a B-

2011-10-11T18:41:00.001-07:00

I think that I really need to stop grading when Margaret is in the room, because she seems to be getting ideas above her station. She picked up a notebook of mine this morning, found a pen,*and gestured imperiously toward the high chair.

I lifted her in, and she commenced her critique, though she spent some time thinking first.

She’s very intent on her job.

And then, it appears, she offered her criticism to me. Because Margaret is a firm believer in the necessity of conferences, where she can explain her commentary.

This is good, because her commentary is somewhat opaque.**

She also pointed out that there were holes in the paper, though she thought they were buttons.

Of course, her word for button is “butt,” which meant that I spent a moment thinking that she was actually commenting on the quality of my lecture notes, and being remarkably rude besides.

*Which, by the way, I find offensive, because I can never find a pen when I want one, and so why she should be able to, when we go to such lengths to keep them out of her reach is beyond me. And deeply unfair. The obvious explanation of this problem is that she has some secret pen stash somewhere at ankle level. I would not put this past her.

**That said, I have frequently wanted to scribble all over student papers.

Our Morning

2011-10-11T18:22:00.001-07:00

A photo essay. (Not a good essay, mind you. I mean, it was taken on a cell phone camera, facing into the light. So it’s as if I misspelled a bunch of words, and decided to use Comic Sans, in an attempt to look professional. But it’s an essay all the same).

Sheep Busting

2011-10-09T13:41:00.001-07:00

One of Margaret’s uncles has been asking, since shortly after her birth, when we were going to get her up on a horse, and we have been not answering. Because it’s the sort of nonsensical question that doesn’t need an answer, and besides, he’s only doing it to be irritating, because he doesn’t like horses himself, and is merely trying to inflict the same sort of childhood trauma on the next generation that he himself had to suffer.

But I digress.

Margaret would probably think that riding a horse was a great idea, but we’re trying to keep her from real horses for a while, and sometimes this involves letting her ride concrete sheep.

Which she thinks is pretty fun.

Though sometimes, after riding on the sheep that she can get on all by herself, she does notice that there are bigger sheep in the sea.*

When this happens, she requests aid, which is usually promptly delivered.

And then, once on the big sheep, she decides that what she really wants is the phone.

Margarets are frequently fickle.

*Her knowledge of idioms and habitats is a bit limited right now, so it’s a perfectly understandable mistake to make.

Sciurid Exegesis

2011-10-09T13:34:00.001-07:00

Margaret is very taken with her Beatrix Potter books, because they are Exactly The Right Size for being carried around as if she were important.*

She doesn’t take kindly to being interrupted when she’s hard at work on a paper on The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, which is, as she will tell you, about an owl. It’s an interpretation that goes somewhat against the grain of current scholarship, but she came to the conclusion after long study, and not just because she can say owl and not squirrel.

And now we’re going to let her go back to work, because she is very busy.

*Which she is, of course.

Margaret Meditates on the Tropes of Toddler Experience

2011-10-08T16:16:00.001-07:00

Leo took Margaret out for her nightly constitutional this evening – or rather, Margaret took Leo out for her nightly constitutional, but the effect is the same. I went out to join them, and found them on the side of the house, engaging in highly stereotypical behavior. I mean, it was so stereotypical that even Margaret was aware of it, which is my explanation of this look she was giving Leo.

Anyway, she frolicked in the autumn leaves, as is expected.

She seems, though, intent on doing the job properly, rather than over the moon with excitement.

Some of the time, she was concentrating so hard on the task at hand that her tongue came out.

Anyway, she is now happy that she can cross this off her list of necessary childhood experiences.

I think that she was actually having fun, but the pressures of being photographed do, of course, weigh on one’s mind. She was not, however, so bowed down under the stress that she didn’t have time to note passing dogs.

Margaret is quite dedicated to cataloguing those members of the canine species that pass our house.

The Laziest Swing on Earth

2011-10-06T07:20:00.001-07:00

Now that the weather is decent, we’ve taken to going to the park a lot. Margaret enjoys it, and it makes it more likely that her stellar sleep schedule is going to stay on track.* We sometimes go in the morning, and we have taken to going pretty regularly at 4:45 or so. We go to the park right next to Leo’s office, so he can look out his windows, see us, and experience that elementary school wistfulness that comes when you’re being kept in from recess. Well, perhaps also so that when he’s done working, he can walk over and join us in playing for a few minutes. But mostly so that he can see us and feel jealous.

Sometimes I get jealous because Margaret gets to drive the whole playground and all I get to do is chase her while she does it, but I’m working on getting over that.

Anyway, Margaret is not always in like with this “running all over until she’s so tired she could fall over” plan I’ve come up with. She likes the swings, which are not energy burning. She likes a wide variety of swings, from the odd

to the traditional.

But the swing that she loves most of all is the laziest swing on earth. It’s like a barcalounger on chains. Every time I put her in it, I feel that I need to give her a beer and a remote, because she’s going to be watching football for the next 6 or 7 hours.

But I let her get in it, because she gives me this look

and I have difficulty resisting it, because I know that behind those eyelids, she’s got puppydog eyes going on.

But, I drive a bit of a bargain – she has to do some time on the teeter-totter to pay for her laziness.

*Yes, I am perfectly comfortable with running my baby ragged. It’s good for her.

Margaret, the Spaghetti Miser

2011-10-03T09:10:00.001-07:00

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil.* Although Margaret is making strides towards understanding and participating in the market economy – she gets that she has to put things on the conveyer belt at the grocery store, but that they will be returned to her later – she hasn’t yet really grasped what money is. I thus find this picture somewhat disturbing, as she seems to be clutching her spaghetti to her chest and hiding it from view.

(And yes, my baby does eat her spaghetti topless, because she doesn’t really keep her bib on as well as we would like, and she is not a tidy spaghetti eater).

On the other hand, for all her lovingly dwelling on her possession of spaghetti, she does seem to understand on some level what it is for, and there’s that.

And then it was bath time. Because her table manners haven’t gotten to the point where she realizes she shouldn’t smear her dinner in her hair.

*Actually, it’s “Radix malorum est cupiditas” which can also be translated as “the love of money is the radish of all evil, which makes more sense in the context of this post. Less sense in the context of reality, but that’s not really my concern here.

Margaret Among The Pumpkins

2011-10-01T09:01:00.001-07:00

I know that it’s early to be going and getting pumpkins, but we don’t like crowds, which leaves us with few good options when it comes to doing fun, seasonal things with Margaret, because if you go at the best time, you’ll be going with everyone else, and then there are crowds. Besides, we were warned that there is nothing sadder than a pumpkin patch on the last weekend in October, which I can see, because it would be a vast wasteland of picked-over pumpkins. Very sad.

Anyway, we went to a pumpkin patch that had many attractions, not least the pumpkins. Margaret went for them first, but seemed somewhat confused by what she was supposed to do with them.

She got amongst them, and then looked to us for some guidance. Which is fair, when you think about it, because I’m not sure what exactly I would think I was supposed to do if I were dropped in the middle of a pumpkin patch.

We patted the pumpkins encouragingly, and she got the idea.

And then after she had touched the pumpkin, she applauded herself. She does that a lot. I don’t think that we need to worry about this kid’s self-esteem.

After experiencing pumpkins red in tooth and claw, she found what was really, in her mind, the hit of the trip: a sewer pipe that was just the right size.

(This is the point at which I stopped taking pictures and ran the length of the pipe to get pictures at the other end. I am very dedicated to your entertainment).

We then spent about a half an hour at each end of the pipe as she ran back and forth. It was apparently the best thing ever. And she didn’t have to duck, but if she got her feet a little bit to the side, she kind of pitched around, which kept her interest.

After the pipe, we went to look at the caged animals they had on display. Margaret looked at the goats,

but spent most of her time climbing the fence, which is not an activity of which her parents approve.

She then began her examination of the pumpkins for sale, starting with somewhat odd ones, mostly because she was fascinated by the tractor which kept driving over to a truck behind this pile of pumpkins.

Then she headed out to look at the pumpkins which were more traditional.

Notice the tongue, which says “I’m concentrating HARD.” It remained out for a while.

Anyway, on to the Margaret-sized pumpkins. We told her she could pick one out. The following pictures are presented without comment.

All right, maybe a little comment. She looked so darn cute with her two pumpkins. And really, we probably need more than one pumpkin.

She’s Got Her Head On Straight

2011-09-30T20:51:00.001-07:00

Margaret has been working on getting her clothes on All. By. Herself. Thank. You. Kindly.

It’s not really working. I mean, she has progressed to the point that she can actively and effectively hinder someone who is trying to get her dressed, if she has decided that the white t-shirt said person is trying to put her into doesn’t jive with her personal sense of style, and she understands the concept behind most types of clothes, but she’s not getting up and getting dressed by herself in the morning, more’s the pity.

She has, however, mastered* the top and the bottom ends of herself. She can get shoes off – and sometimes back on – with the best of them, and as the following series of photos shows, she’s got the hat thing sorted.

So there’s still some work to be done, but she gets there eventually. Mostly. See?

*I use this word very loosely. In fact, what I mean when I say mastered isn’t really so much mastered as started thinking about.

Mr. Wuffles*

2011-09-30T20:41:00.001-07:00

Margaret has acquired a security object. We tried and tried and tried to get her to attach herself to a green froggy thingy, but she wouldn’t. We wanted her to attach to said green froggy thingy because it was light-weight, and we had several of them. Also, it wasn’t some pink excrescence that we would be ashamed to be seen carrying, so that was a bonus.

But Margaret was having none of it.

She didn’t, to her credit, decide that she had to have some electric lavender giraffe or anything. No, she found a stuffed dog that I’ve had for years, and decided that it was the best thing ever.

She sleeps with it, she carries it around, and when she’s upset, it calms her down. All of this is wonderful, but it is completely irreplaceable.

You see, it was bought when my niece Hannah was born. Hannah is now 8., and the company which made the dog is now defunct. He was meant to go to her as a baby present, but somehow, he didn’t, and then the moment had passed, and he took up residence on the shelf next to my bulldog, Wince (short for Winston, obvs). And there he languished, until Margaret decided that she had to have him.

Which is fine, but what will we do if he gets lost?**

*Not that I spend too much time at home alone with Margaret – who has many sterling qualities, but is not, at this particular moment, much of a conversationalist – but the dog’s full name is Rolf Wuffles, pronounced, as you may have imagined, WOOF-els.

**Research while writing this post has led me to the information that he is available on ebay, so I suppose that is an option.

Child Labor Laws? What Child Labor Laws?

2011-09-30T20:29:00.001-07:00

We’ve always felt that we were the sort of parents who were going to turn out self-sufficient children who weren’t used to being waited on hand and foot. We thought this because we don’t make enough money to employ a staff for our home, and because we’re certainly not going to wait on our children had and foot.

It seems to be working in Margaret’s case. She will wander around the kitchen and close cupboard and pantry doors for me.* She sweeps things. She cleans her own face and high-chair tray after a meal. I mean, she doesn’t clean them well, but she certainly swipes a wet cloth over them.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when she tried her hand at yard work.

She found a fertilizer cart unattended.

So she took matters into her own hands.

She works hard.

Very hard.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get the thing to move, so she had to let it be.

I wish she didn’t look quite so much like she expected me to do something about this problem.

*She also opens them for me when I don’t want them opened, and occasionally tries her hand at getting into the highly poisonous cleaning materials under the kitchen sink. But I’ve foiled her there, because I keep the highly poisonous cleaning fluids in the bathroom cupboard, which is a pain to get into. One step ahead, that’s what I am.

Margaret’s First Haircut*

2011-09-30T08:12:00.001-07:00

Margaret has needed a haircut for a while. She had a very wispy look, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that it is only in the last couple of weeks that she has been brought to tolerate the bow or the rubber band as a method of keeping her bangs out of her face. But the worst part was the back, where she was growing something that looked a bit like a rat-tail, only without the grooming and definition that that implies.**

So I ~~searched on the internet and interrogated my friends~~ happened to remember that one of my friends had had a good experience at a kid’s haircutting place. And off we went.

It was pretty impressive. First, they had chairs like cars, which makes me think that my hairdressers are getting off pretty easy. Do they provide activities for me? No.

Second, they had televisions where the kid could watch a favorite show. We were somewhat hampered by the fact that Margaret doesn’t have a favorite show, since she doesn’t watch television, but we decided that she could try out Mickey Mouse. She didn’t seem to mind it.

Margaret took this process very seriously.

This seriousness is actually a good thing, I think, because it shows that she is aware that it is not always the best idea to let someone you don’t know wave pointy objects about your head.

So she kept a close eye on what was going on, via the mirror.

Occasionally taking time out, of course, to drive the car.

And sometimes experimenting with driving with her feet, because that’s a good skill to have, right?

Anyway, it went well, she didn’t scream too much, and her hair now looks like it is meant to do something. It doesn’t always do it, mind you, but it looks like we mean it to do something, which is a step in the right direction, if you ask me.

*This isn’t technically Margaret’s first haircut, because her Aunt Char trimmed her up last March a bit at the back where it was beginning to look a smidge moth-eaten, but this was her first haircut not in someone’s kitchen. Also her first haircut that was done without her being clutched to my chest, which meant that I could take pictures. So for the purposes of this blog, this was her first haircut. And anyone who has a problem with that can take it up with someone else. Because I’m clearly very busy, which is why this explanatory footnote is going on far longer than it has nay business going, and has devolved into self-referential and narcissistic twaddle.

**Which is, just to be clear, not very much at all.

Mommy’s Little Helper

2011-09-27T08:57:00.001-07:00

One of the things that my job requires that I do is occasionally grade papers. This is not, I have to say, my favorite part, so sometimes it gets put off. And then sometimes I realize that I really have to get those papers back by today, because the excuses are beginning to sound like those offered by students, and that’s never good.

So then I sit down and spend the morning grading frantically so that they’ll be done before class.

In general, Margaret is pretty amenable to this plan, which is very nice, because although I can multitask with the best of them, I defy even the best of them to grade papers on university mission statements while singing the itsy-bitsy spider and dancing. Can’t be done.

And sometimes, she wants to help, so we set her up with her own papers and colored pens.

She’s very careful to use purple instead of red (even though she has red) because studies have shown that students are upset by grading done in red ink.

She’s also very thoughtful. She doesn’t want to commit herself to anything before she’s really pondered the matter.

But when she gets started, it has to be admitted that her commentary can be pretty scathing. I mean, I’m a tough grader, but I rarely – even when I really want to – scribble all over a student’s paper and throw it on the floor.

All The Single Ladies

2011-09-11T16:41:00.001-07:00

Margaret loves dancing.

This led, inexorably, to Beyonce. I’m not really sure how, but it did. And she loved it. So here are the videos.

This video is the last in the series (I took a number of them, because she loved the song so much that she made me play it 4 times before – mercifully – it was time to eat dinner). With the music, there was a music video, and in the video, the dancers were, as Margaret notes, wearing rather impressive shoes.

Also, pigtails! Cute!

Angst

2011-09-11T16:23:00.001-07:00

People have expressed worry about how Margaret will react to the problem of sharing her mother with another small person. I can see their point, but I generally think that she’ll be fine. She’s a generally nice person, with an accommodating disposition, and she likes people, so I’m just going on the assumption that she’s not going to suffer too much.

I am, however, worried about the cat. He doesn’t like people, he isn’t accommodating, and he isn’t nice. And the new baby is going to take his bed away.

And when he’s angry, the claws come out.

Whoa

2011-09-11T16:19:00.001-07:00

Margaret finds the slide electrifying.

Go Speed Racer

2011-09-07T07:34:00.001-07:00

But first, an aside. I was going to put up a picture of the ultrasound yesterday that announced that this blog will soon be about two girls (I suppose that this second child might feel that it was my responsibility to create a blog just for her, but I think she’s going to have to learn to cope with the fact that a lot of her things will once have been Margaret’s, and she might as well start with the blog). The reason I am not is that none of the pictures are anything recognizable, except the one that tells you that she is going to be a girl.*

However, she appears to have a spine, and a heart that does what it’s meant to, and a bladder, and a stomach and a brain with two halves. So that’s good.

Anyway, Margaret has been much cuter, so I will talk about her now, with pictures.

We went to the grocery store the other day, and there was the most marvelous cart I have ever seen. It was a bit smaller in capacity than a normal grocery cart, but much more maneuverable than those carts that have the car on the front for the kids. This one had a car-type seat with steering wheels, facing forward, but up where the usual seat would be for a kid. And Margaret loved it.

It strikes me, as I look at it, that I put her in the cart as if we were in England. But it’s never too early to learn about right-hand drive, right?

Anyway, she had a great time, albeit a slightly blurry one.

*Also, perhaps this is not the most auspicious first mention on the blog. Oh well.

Oh Dear

2011-09-01T06:46:00.001-07:00

I’ve always been afraid of having a girl. Not because of the usual boy-related reasons to be afraid of having girls. What gives me the heebie-jeebies is the thought that she could be one of those girls. You know, the excessive pink-wearing, princess-gear demanding, interested in nothing but hair and makeup and shoes kind of girl.

And it’s striking fear in my heart, really it is.

Because I see signs.

Exhibit A: Wearing my shoes

Exhibit B: Wearing my shoes and then striking a pose.

Exhibit C: Carrying a purse everywhere

Exhibit D: Excessive interest in hairstyles:

See? I find these developments disturbing. Cute, but disturbing. Clearly, as an antidote, I need to spend more time working on her dribbling (soccer, not drool) in the backyard. She’s showing a tendency to only kick with her right foot, and that’s not a good habit to get into.

Chubby Cheeks

2011-08-21T07:25:00.001-07:00

We did not, until recently, comment too much about Margaret’s chubby cheeks, but a few nights ago, Leo said “chubby cheeks” to Margaret, and her response was very cute, so we’ve been saying it more and more.

She also likes pinching other people’s cheeks, but she pinches hard. Leo is braver than I am.

Work, Work, Work

2011-08-21T07:16:00.001-07:00

Margaret’s been being put to work, and the poor thing seems to like it. I mentioned a few months ago that she likes to sweep, and now she seems to have developed a mania for watering plants.

And with that little watering can, it takes FOREVER to get enough water for the roses, poor thing.

Actually, the small watering can is a recent addition, because she was so fond of the big one. While we were housesitting for Leo’s parents, Margaret would go and get the watering can every morning and quietly nag me until I went and watered the roses. (It was a good reminder, but being nagged by your one-year-old to do chores is a little odd – I mean, she may be in charge, but she doesn’t have to be so obvious about it). So she now has her own little watering can so that she can help, and perhaps the responsibility will cure her of reminding me to do things.

Wascawy Wabbit

2011-08-17T12:15:00.001-07:00

I am traumatized.

Terribly, deeply traumatized.

Also, my hands smell like alcohol, and not the fun kind.

Anyway, this morning, I was out in the yard with Margaret, and she was wandering around, picking things up and bringing them to me. You know, sticks, leaves, rocks, etc.

So I was videoing her.

Guess what she brought me?

A RABBIT EYE.

Puck had dismembered a rabbit, and Margaret brought me a piece of it.

Ugh.

We are still washing our hands.

And Margaret has been sanitized beyond sense and reason.

Ugh.

The Importance of Putting Things in Other Things

2011-08-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

Margaret is a big fan of bags, buckets, cups, watering cans – really anything that you can put something else into. Added bonus points if said thing has a handle that she can sling over her shoulder. In fact, when she says “bye-bye” (you know, if going to go across the room or around a corner or even just over there) she likes it best if there is some receptacle that she can sling on her back. It adds verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, don’t you know.

Of course, with a bucket, you pretty much just have to carry it by the handle, particularly if it’s a very small bucket.

Another great love of her existence is, as has been mentioned in these virtual pages before, gumballs. She is also fond of sticks, leaves, and very small rocks.*

And this morning, she combined all these loves together.

She seemed very proud of herself.

Notice the Large Rock in the foreground.

She’s also very careful not to get overwhelmed with too much work. She’s very good at taking a step back and looking at the big picture.

*Actually, she likes large rocks too, and tries to pick them up every chance she gets. We don’t have pictures of this, because when she does try to pick them up, instead of taking pictures, I rush over to stop her, because if she dropped it it would break her little foot, and that would be sad.

The Downside of Baby Sign Language

2011-08-16T10:35:00.001-07:00

Baby sign language is a big thing, and in general, I approve. It’s really nice to be able to communicate with your child before she can actually talk, and it makes for a less frustrated baby. We taught Margaret the sign for “more,” which she interpreted to be the sign for “food,” which – as that was more or less what we were going for – we let slide.

It means that she has for months been able to mutter about being hungry while I pushed her around the grocery store.

She has recently learned to say “banana" (well, “nana,” but it means banana), and she loves that she can ask for a specific type of food. But I digress.

Anyway, all I have talked about is the upside of sign language, but last night, Leo made an interesting observation, which I will reproduce for posterity: he noticed that the problem with teaching your baby sign language is that it means that even when the baby’s mouth is stuffed so full that they can’t possibly fit another morsel into it, they can still ask for more. And they do.

I’d have taken a video of this, but it’s really best to be able to pick and choose your less messy shots. After all, immediately after this picture, she decided that it was just too much, took the partially chewed banana out of her mouth, and tried again, with greater success. You guys didn’t want to see that, did you?

Dancing Margaret

2011-08-15T19:37:00.001-07:00

One of the things that Margaret does a lot is dance, to whatever music is playing. We had Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 playing yesterday, and she was boogieing to it (it gets more boogieable later on, really it does).

Anyway, we have some video of her dancing to Woody Guthrie, but it’s a bit intermittent, since there were other distractions.

And apparently songs about the Columbia River make her want to a) pull her parents’ toes off; b) dance with her parents’ feet; or c) play the this little piggy game. Forcibly.

So don’t say you weren’t warned.

Margaret’s Little Pony

2011-08-15T19:07:00.001-07:00

We experimented with hairstyles last night. Leo’s cousin is getting married in a few weeks, and Margaret’s hair has been getting longer and longer, and so we (well, I) decided to try out putting her hair in a couple of French braids.

Here are our conclusions from the experiment:

1) In order for this to succeed, one or both of us needs to be sedated. And it probably shouldn’t be just me, because an unsedated Margaret with a drugged up caregiver is not a good scene.

2) Margaret’s hair is really fine, and probably needs a lot of hairspray to go in a braid.

3) Rat tail combs, though useful in combing and separating hair, are deadly vicious in the hands of toddlers.

Anyway, there will be no French braids, but we did get Margaret’s hair up in a ponytail.

Which she then proceeded to tear out.

And then she tried to look innocent, which didn’t fool anyone.

I Think The Grandparents Are Confused

2011-08-15T11:19:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure that Margaret’s grandparents have read the memo we sent out about their various roles in her life, which is probably because we never sent the memo, because we thought that things were sufficiently clear without it.

For example, we didn’t think that this grandparent would be involved in introducing Margaret to the balance board:

Seriously, these grandparents are getting so difficult to control.

Not A Morning Person

2011-08-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

At least, not until after she’s had her milk. She notices that mommy and daddy drink drinks in the morning, and that makes them more awake, so she’s modeling that behavior. Or I just took an unflattering picture. One of those.

I Fought The Wall, And The Wall Won

2011-08-14T13:39:00.001-07:00

Margaret attempted to dodge around Leo while running full tilt towards a doorway. Leo was in the doorway. Margaret hit the corner of the wall. It was very sad.

We hoped that she had learned a lesson, but it appears not. She has only learned that she can head-butt walls and live to tell the tale.

No More Monkeys

2011-08-14T13:36:00.001-07:00

I have often wondered about the doctor in that rhyme. I mean, think about it: the monkey falls out of the bed and breaks his head. The mother calls the doctor. The doctor says that monkeys shouldn’t jump on the bed. But apparently the doctor just ignores the poor, broken-headed monkey. It seems cruel. And probably a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, although it probably doesn’t say “First, don’t be an annoying idiot when someone calls you about a child’s injury.”

Though it should.

Anyway, we got Margaret an off-falling-proof bed, to avoid the irritating comments of doctors who like to state the obvious.

All By Myself

2011-08-14T11:29:00.001-07:00

First, an apology. I have been having computer issues, and laziness issues, and vomiting issues (which is actually a pun, but perhaps it would be best not to parse too closely, because that would be needlessly graphic). So I haven’t been posting as many pictures as I ought to. I have been putting some up on facebook, so if people want to see pictures of Margaret, they can see them there.*

But that is a sad and pathetic excuse, even to me.

Anyway, it’s not like I have the excuse that Margaret is keeping me busy, because she’s becoming very self-sufficient. Just yesterday she made her own breakfast.

Of course, she has been assiduously following the news, so she checked the nutritional information on the Nutella first.

The somewhat high sugar content, plus the fact that her hands aren’t big enough to get the lid off, contributed to her bypassing the spread (for which our furniture thanked her) and just having bread and milk.

This breakfast was pleasing to her, but she still wanted to check out what other people were having.

*And Mom, while I think that your desire to not intrude on the private space for your children that is Facebook is laudable, you ought also to realize that we are friends with EMILY and TRENT, and so we are already filtering ourselves more than we would be talking to you, so there’s really no reason, unless you’re just trying to avoid friends you successfully shook off half a century ago, in which case stop using us as an excuse and admit that you’re being anti-social.

Glamour Shot

2011-07-21T17:15:00.001-07:00

I think Margaret wants to be a movie star.

I mean, there’s not much evidence to go on. She likes hamming it up for people, and she isn’t what you would call camera shy.

But really, all I’ve got to go on is this shot, taken in South Dakota. Anyone who could look like this in South Dakota is clearly on a mission that involves movie stardom.

She’s probably going to have to learn to talk a little more clearly first, though. So I’ll mention that to her as a motivation.

Not A Morning Person

2011-07-21T17:08:00.001-07:00

Except, of course, that she is. The sort of morning person who wakes up and wants other people to be up paying attention to her and not still sleeping, because sleeping is for the weak, and Margaret’s parents aren’t weak, are they?

Margaret Eats A Logger Burger

2011-07-19T09:31:00.001-07:00

There is, on the Olympic Peninsula, a place called Joyce, and in that place there is a restaurant called The Joyce Family Kitchen. If you read their blurb, you will notice that they spend a lot of time talking about their claim to “fame,” the Logger Burger.*

So we got one for Margaret.

Actually, we took 13 adults and 3 children, and we ate 4. I think that Margaret was upset after this picture when we took the whole burger away from her and made her make do with scraps. She was so ready to just dive right in.

*We’re tolerably certain that few actual loggers were harmed to make these burgers, but on the other hand, loggers are becoming a scarcer and scarcer breed, and one possible explanation is that for the past 35 years, they’ve been being harvested to make Logger Burgers. But probably not.

Beach Bum, Part 1*

2011-07-19T09:18:00.001-07:00

Margaret loves the beach.

We took her to Salt Creek/Crescent Beach/Tongue Point twice** while we were in Washington, and she had a whale of a time. This speaks to two things: Margaret’s intrepid nature and her good insulation.

Because it was not exactly a tropical beach.

The first time we went, it was probably 65 degrees outside (maybe 70, but there was a pretty stiff wind off the water, so it was hard to tell) and the water was probably 55 degrees. Margaret did not let this daunt her, but charged in full speed ahead.*

She was particularly taken with her shovel and piece of driftwood, which she clung to despite all attempts to take them from her, real or imagined.

This one was imagined.

She also enjoyed kelp-poking and seaweed-gathering.

When we hauled her out of the freezing cold water, her teeth were chattering and she was turning a little blue, but she was not particularly impressed with us for ending her fun, even if the tide was coming in and threatening to cut us off. Not impressed AT ALL.

*As she has never heard of torpedoes, she’s not as intrepid as Admiral Farragut, but still intrepid.

*I’ll do part 2 when I find the cord to get my photos off the phone. It’s still in the luggage somewhere. Tonight, maybe?

** See * above.

Margaret vs. The Dirt Clod

2011-07-19T08:58:00.001-07:00

In Washington, we spent much more time outdoors than we will be for the next month or so, because it was in general a nice, pleasant 65-80 degrees and sunny.

Margaret got to help with some outdoor work, as I noted in a previous post. She helped her Nana with weeding, convincing the clods of dirt that they really didn’t want to come around anymore.*

And then she went to get the pitchfork, which would have helped her, certainly, but her MEAN MOMMY wouldn’t let her play with it.

Mommies are well-known spoilers of all pitchfork-related fun.

*In point of fact, she shredded them over the lawn, scattering the weeds as well, so I’m not sure that it was entirely helpful in a strict sense, but she means well, and she gets dirty, so that has to count for something.

Losing My Readership

2011-07-19T08:45:00.001-07:00

I am aware that there has been a long gap in my posts. The reasons for this are many and various. To wit:

1) My computer has been being recalcitrant; in Washington, it ate it’s power source alive, which meant that I was dependent on Ron, who was understandably hesitant to lend his power source to a computer which destroyed them.

2) I was in Washington, where the internet is slow and uploading pictures takes FOREVER.

3) When not in Washington, I was driving across the country with Margaret, which was tiring and hot and didn’t leave a lot of free time, though those of you on facebook got kept up to date, because I can post to that from my phone.

And finally, the one that I think holds the most water, 4) I’m pregnant again, which means that I have spent the past month and a half napping when Margaret naps, going to bed when she goes to bed, and generally feeling like a puddle of nauseated porridge. Nauseated porridge doesn’t have to write posts on blogs.

Anyway, I imagine that you’re all giving me a skeptical look, sort of like this one:

Backson. Bisy. Backson.

2011-07-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

My computer is on the fritz, and so the blog has been slow. I'm typing this on my phone. There will be posts when I get back to St. Louis next week. She has done many exciting things, though, so stay tuned.

Land Of The Midnight Sun

2011-06-25T13:33:00.001-07:00

We’re farther north than usual. And here’s how I can tell. It stays light for a very long time in the evenings. I may notice a little more because my room doesn’t have curtains (well, it has one in the window facing the neighbor’s house, after an unfortunate experience when I was in high school with a shower and an entire 12-year-old boy’s baseball team practicing across the pasture), but it is still very light at night.

Here is my evidence: a picture of a sleeping Margaret taken at 9:30 pm.

No flash. There’s just that much light.

At Nana’s House, Everybody Works

2011-06-25T13:29:00.001-07:00

Margaret wants to drive the tractor. We’re not sure this is a good idea.

If she could talk a little better, she’d be saying “gas it up, Grandpa.” But she can’t, so she just said “Ah!” emphatically.

And then when we wouldn’t let her drive the tractor (for no reason other than that her feet don’t reach the pedals), she tried to find other work to do.

She’s very helpful.

Summer Hiatus

2011-06-25T13:16:00.001-07:00

I’ve been bad about this recently, which is, of course, unfair to my vast reading public. My excuse is that at least half of my vast reading public is, in fact, getting to see Margaret in the flesh, and so doesn’t need to have the daily updates. Also, they have a really slow internet connection, and I’ve had a cold.

Anyway, a little over a week ago, Margaret, Ron and I drove across the country. I very carefully packed all sorts of interesting toys and books to amuse her as we drove. Here she is in the latter half of Kansas, playing with an empty pop bottle.

We stopped with friends in Denver on the first night, and Margaret enjoyed playing with new toys.

She also enjoyed playing with the friends’ son in the park near their house.

Though this picture clearly says “Hey, Mom, how come HE gets to swing so high?”

We then continued on our way, and Margaret shamelessly texted while driving.

I’m just impressed that she knows that the screen shows up better in the shade than the sun.

Anyway, she’s a very good traveler, and I can face the return journey without too much fear and trepidation.

Margaret’s Toilette

2011-06-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

(No, not like that).

Margaret has developed an interest in what is going on with her hair. She likes hairbows. Not enough to keep them in her hair, but she brings them to me, tries to put them on the top of her head, and then squawks at me to make them stay in for 30 seconds so she can tear them out all by herself.

Some mornings, I brush her hair while she’s eating because she is immobilized, and it makes it easier.

Some mornings, when I do that, she demands that I give her the hairbrush as well as her breakfast, because she likes to have everything she could possibly want within her reach.

And then she tries to brush her hair, though she gets the back of the brush more often than the front.

At the very end of this video, you can hear Margaret’s new word. She has learned how to say “uh-oh,” though for her it doesn’t so much mean “whoops, oh dear, that was a mistake” so much as it means “did you see how far I threw that thing, Mom?” I cut off a bit of it, because I was already in the process of stopping the camera when she said it, but it’s mostly there.

Morning In The Backyard

2011-06-09T15:09:00.001-07:00

It was cool this morning.* Margaret and I got back from taking Leo to work, and I gave her a choice: she could go in and have breakfast, or she could play in the backyard.

The wheels in her head turned visibly, which was very cute. She knows what breakfast means, but she wanted to stay outside. Outside won for a while.

She is perfecting her running

And she loves her soccer balls, but I begin to despair of explaining the rules to her.

Another place that she enjoys practicing her running is downhill on concrete, which is, as you know, the best place to practice.

And then, of course, she gets to the bottom of the hill and realizes that Mommy is cruel and unsympathetic, because the gate is shut.

Since I had made it so that she couldn’t play in the real traffic, she decided to check out the car.

And she knows that she’s not supposed to play under the car, you can tell.

It was at this point that I repeated the word “breakfast,” and she decided that that was a good idea. Pausing only to inspect the propane tank,

and sit for a moment on the stairs,

and perhaps play a little on the stairs,

she went in to breakfast.

*I lie, you know. It was 82, which is not cool, not at all. But it has been in the high 90s, so 82 felt bearable.

Raising A Snob

2011-06-08T17:53:00.001-07:00

We are. I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed, but we’re definitely raising a snooty little girl.

Look, this is camembert. What sort of decent, well-regulated baby chows down on a wedge of camembert? I ask you.

Also, notice how she has the bangs down over her face and an expression of ennui.

Of course, it may just be tiredness, or resignation at being photographed again, and it soon faded as she crammed the cheese in her mouth.

She also had the chance tonight to have – besides the camembert – a local Missouri goat cheese, handmade from milk produced on the farm where it is made, and given by goats that have lived a very pampered life, as well as some Jarlsberg.

She disdained the Jarlsberg.

It as, as the link tells you, available in over 30,000 supermarkets in the US, and I’m tolerably certain that that was why she didn’t like it. It’s a very mild cheese, comparatively, since it doesn’t taste like either moldy gym socks or pepper. But Margaret – our budding snob – was in the mood for some strong flavors. Last night she made inroads into our Stilton. Goodness.

Swimming!

2011-06-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

It turns out that when it’s approximately 185 degrees outside, and there is a gentle slope into the water, Margaret is very happy to go swimming.

We had tried to put her in the water last weekend, in a swimming pool, and though she didn’t really complain, exactly, she also didn’t really seem to be enjoying herself, since the moment she came near the edge, she started reaching frantically for it.

But on Monday, we went out to a lake, and she thought it was marvelous. So marvelous, in fact, that she wanted to run deeper and deeper into the water, which was ever so much fun, as I hadn’t been expecting her to want to swim much, and so was only equipped for wading.

Luckily, after much walking up and down the beach on our part, we were rescued by a grandmother and a great-aunt, who were willing to turn themselves into a fence. This intervention also meant that I could take some pictures, because strangely, I had not been particularly interested in the combination of my camera and the wriggly, attempting-to-plunge-into-deep-water baby.

Margaret appreciated it.

In her corral, she got to try out splashing,

And she stood up for a bit,

But it wasn’t as exciting as she’d thought, because it somewhat curtailed her splashing opportunities.

I think that the upshot of this is that I will be taking her swimming more often this summer. Outdoors. In the heat. Oh boy.

Also, Wardrobe Changes

2011-06-04T07:02:00.001-07:00

I spent a lot of time trying to find shoes for Margaret to wear for this wedding, but apparently white patent leather Mary Janes sell out at Easter, and shoe stores don’t restock them even though kids’ feet keep growing all through the summer, and you can’t buy the shoes before Easter for a June wedding because SOMEONE’S feet keep growing at an amazing rate.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway, I had decided that Margaret would wear white sandals to the wedding, and I thought that I had the final say on that.

But Margaret found other shoes.

They don’t match her dress AT ALL (besides, I need to wear them), but she’s committed to them.

So we’ll see. It’s going to be a long day if she steals my shoes and insists on riding the rocking horse to the church.

Get Me To The Church On Time

2011-06-04T06:47:00.001-07:00

Leo’s sister is getting married today, and Margaret and I have been discussing timetables for naps and things for weeks now. It’s particularly important to figure out how long it will take us to get to the church, because her nap technically should end just about when the service starts, so we want her to have as much sleep as possible but still get there on time. It’s problematic, you see?

Anyway, Margaret has thrown a monkey wrench in the works this morning by deciding to go by alternative transportation that we haven’t had time to time.

I tried to tell her that I wasn’t sure that rocking horse was the best method of transport, and she had a lot to say on the subject.

I’ll let you know what the upshot of our negotiations is.

Snuggly Bear

2011-06-03T12:29:00.001-07:00

I would like to amend my contention in the previous post that Margaret’s requirements for happiness are milk, blueberries, and a hairbrush. Apparently, she is equally enthused by an enormous stuffed bear, a bucket, and a cell phone. (Uncles are good to hit up for cell phones, you know?)

Of course, it was also important to check if anyone was texting her.

And then check out the bear and make sure that he wasn’t making any aggressive moves; we went to the zoo yesterday, and Margaret saw the real bears, and I think she’s watching Bertie a little more carefully now.

As she should.

Blueberries, Milk, A Hairbrush, And You

2011-06-01T20:31:00.001-07:00

Is what, I assume, Margaret says makes a perfect evening. (We’ll come back to this. I’m going to have a bit of a ramble here, but it circles back around to blueberries, milk, a hairbrush, me, and – most importantly – photographic documentation).

I’ll tell you what doesn’t make a perfect evening for Margaret – dinner at a barbeque place, even a nice, upscale-ish one, that doesn’t cater to her particular wants.

Leo’s brother Patrick is in town, because Leo’s sister is getting married this weekend (Helen’s in town too, but she doesn’t enter into this story, so you can feel free to ignore her). We all went out to this restaurant. We left a little late, but I figured that Margaret would be okay, because she had gotten up late, had a late nap, and in general given every impression of being a baby who had shifted her schedule by about an hour.

But when we got the the restaurant, nothing was making her happy. She kept picking up her sippy cup full of water and trying to transfer it to the floor. She wiggled and squirmed. We ordered her mac and cheese as soon as we walked in the door, but even that wasn’t making her happy.

So when the food came, I bolted mine, and took her home.

When we came in, she squirmed out of my arms, ran over to the fridge and started banging her hand on the door. I opened it, and she pointed and stretched and made adamant noises about her sippy cup.

She slurped her milk (we had been giving her water at the restaurant) and apparently that was the whole problem.

(And here’s where we return to the title of the post).

So I put her in her chair, and gave her milk and blueberries, which are guaranteed to soothe the savage Margaret.

See how soothed she looks?

And then I decided that I would take advantage of her immobility to brush her hair, since the fussing and the heat and the sunscreen and the mac and cheese that made it into her hair had combined to make it a bit bedraggled.

Margaret commandeered the brush.

She looked at it carefully, considering the possibilities.

And then she took a stab at brushing her hair.

And didn’t quite get it.

Anyway, I let her down out of her chair after she finished eating, drinking, and primping, and she played happily for another half an hour. So the moral is that we should not go out without milk, I guess.

Buy! Buy! Sell!

2011-06-01T20:05:00.001-07:00

(Actually, I don’t know what you say when you’re on the phone with your broker, because I don’t have enough money to have a broker – or rather, I’m spending the money I could give to a broker on fripperies like paying down the student loans).

Anyway, Margaret was certainly having a Very Important conversation on the “phone.”*

In the middle, though, she had a dropped call** and had to redial.

When she got her interlocutor back, she spoke firmly to them.

She is, however, of the opinion that that sort of thing needs some privacy, so she walked away from prying eyes. And ears.

*Known to most of us as a orange teething ring, but let’s not quibble. For Margaret, anything is a phone. When she gets to her granparents’ house, she makes a beeline for the tv room and commandeers the remote to play the part of a phone.

** Her parents are particularly cruel, and don’t get her a very good phone plan, sadly. Partially because the plans available for orange teething rings are fairly limited.

Margaret On Guard

2011-05-31T08:18:00.001-07:00

We haven’t actually been letting Margaret watch movies about taking rings to Mt. Doom and destroying them, but she still managed to mimic a classic pose today out in the yard.

I’m not sure what she was opposing so fiercely – perhaps Leo was looking particularly menacing – but she certainly kept whatever it was from going past her.