Happy 2018!

... See, this is why I never post, because all I wanted to do was make some quick notes about the fun things from the past month-plus. And by the time I get it all out, it's taken like 3 hours (cobbled together in 10-minute chunks).

Nevertheless... ( December 2017 highlights )

We didn't actually go see Wonder Woman last Sunday when we had the babysitter. The morning of, as we were getting ready, Etrace said "I don't think we're going to be able to enjoy a movie if we're listening every instant for the phone to ring," so we shifted smoothly over to Plan B and went on a lunch date in the courthouse square in Crown Point (barely 5 minutes from the babysitter's house).

There's a fancy steakhouse we'd been wanting to try, but Google said they didn't open til noon and we had arranged to drop Aria off around 11am. So we first tried to go shoe shopping (also closed Sundays, alas), then went for donuts and coffee at the local donuts-and-comics shop, like ya do. (Etrace: "Dessert first?" Me: "This is breakfast! Then we'll have lunch!" They were quite good donuts, especially when surrounded by Star Wars and Marvel paraphernalia. Would nom again.) Next, a nice grownup lunch where we actually got to chat about things other than our child in a leisurely fashion. And then we browsed the Antique Mall next door for another 20 minutes, until I got too antsy and we headed back to get her.

We got back there right around 2pm, and all of them (mom, kids, and Aria) were playing contentedly with blocks on the living room floor. Aria jumped up and ran to the door calling "Mama! Dada!" and then remarked, perfectly calmly, "You came back!" Amanda said Aria was perfectly fine the whole time and never got anxious in the slightest. Really good to know.

The next few weekends are pretty busy (nephew J's birthday and, oh yeah, we should try to hold a garage sale one of these Sundays), and then my mom will be here July 22-29. Maybe *she'll* be willing to watch Aria solo for a couple hours one afternoon/evening....

ETA: While I'm here, I should note that Tuesday was July 4, and after a quiet day at home, we went over to Etrace's cousins' house (also in Crown Point) for a small toddler-friendly cookout and fireworks. Aria was way more interested in the swingset, sand table, playhouse, and toy cars (the ride-in kind) than in the fireworks; maybe next year. Myself, I had never seen home fireworks that actually go *up in the air* and explode like real grownup fireworks, so I was impressed! I said to Etrace that we never had anything like that growing up, all we ever got were the little ground works like snakes and sparklers and smoke bombs and camellias; he said "That's because that's all that was legal in Indiana until 2006." That explains that! We bailed out at 9pm to take Aria home to bed, but driving home we could see other people's home fireworks displays all around us. It reminded us of arriving home from our roadtrip honeymoon 3 years ago on July 4, seeing fireworks all along the horizon for the final several miles as we drove north up I-65 at twilight. <3

Etrace says Aria is getting steadily... not what you could call "worse", but more of a handful, more rambunctious and wanting to get into everything and create chaos. He is worried she's bored. I don't think it necessarily means she's bored just because she suddenly likes to methodically dump out every one of her toys (or books from the bookcase, clean diapers from the basket, etc) onto the floor and mess them around. That's a way of entertaining herself, right? Better than endless hours of Elmo videos (which she will beg for if not distracted by sufficient mess to create).

Basically, the operative principle nowadays is "what can we do to tire her out today??" ( Read more... )

I took Aria to shul this past Shabbat, and when we pulled up I said "Do you know who we're going to see? Danielle!" (her adorable little buddy, age 3.5) They weren't there yet, since we actually arrived close to on time, but then every 30 seconds Aria said "Where Danel? Where Danel?" SO CUTE. Danielle's equally adorable mom J (who is also the Hebrew school principal) commented approvingly on how well Aria is suddenly talking. She also mentioned they have a Sunday morning synagogue preschool class -- separate from the Federation weekday preschool which is never going to be practical for us -- and they normally start at age 3 but she thought Aria would do fine if we wanted to sign her up this fall, especially since Danielle will be in the class. "Oh, and it's drop-off!" MAGIC WORDS. Anyway, they have a sign-up/meet-the-teachers day in August, so we'll see how that goes.

Potty training! ( You've been warned. )

( language and social stuff )

A year and a half! It's already mindboggling that two years ago I was pregnant and one year ago we already had a sturdy infant in place of a tiny newborn.

Pediatrician says: height 33" (85th %ile), weight 24lb 14oz (60th %ile), head circumference 90th %ile. Everything looks good.

We are finally seeing that first real blossoming of vocabulary. ( food, clothes, shapes, and the requisite animal noises )

We really ought to take more video of her at this stage, but it's hard because when I bring in the iPad -- or even the regular camera -- she immediately grabs for it and wails if you hold it out of her reach.

I feel like there were some other developmental things I meant to note, but I can't think of them. She can drink water from an open cup now, when she wants to; but I only give her an ounce at a time because (a) she has trouble regulating how much to tip into her mouth without choking herself, and (b) most of the time she's more interested anyway in dumping out the water and smearing it around her tray, and/or piling bits of her food into the cup. Apparently she's our little raccoon.

Aria turned 16 months yesterday!

New words: Besides "Hi!" and "Bye!", "baw" (ball) and "baba" (banana), she now sometimes says "haaa" (hat), "cah" (car), "kaka" (cracker), and "Tsuts" (Church, the cat). In the last day or two we suddenly started hearing "Uh-oh!" and "Go-ga" (Coco, Grandma's goofball German shepherd who lives downstairs but bursts in up here all the time).

New skills: Besides getting better with the fork and spoon, she suddenly resists having any grooming tools used on her -- comb, toothbrush, nail clippers -- because she wants to grab them and "do" everything herself!

I am way behind on pictures, but maybe I'll try to download some stuff off the camera this afternoon.

The 10th of Av is Aria's Hebrew birthday. Last year, like this year, it was the observed date of the fast of Tisha B'Av since the actual 9th of Av fell on Shabbat. Last year I missed the candlelight reading of Eicha because I was at the hospital in hour 17 or so of "early" labor. (I was reliving my own version of Lamentations though.) Last night I missed it because it was competing with baby bathtime/bedtime and I just couldn't face the logistics of driving 40 minutes each way to shul and back. But it's still on my mind.

I'm not fasting, either, to be honest. I thought about trying, but my brain is so foggy already these days that I just can't face spending a day in the fasting zone. I need to be able to do things.

Wishing a meaningful fast to those who are observing, though.

Shortly after she passed 10 months, Aria suddenly transitioned from "take 2 steps and fall" to "walking all the way across the patio"! so month 11 has mostly been about toddling around. Now that she is hands-free, she likes to pick up one thing in each hand -- two shoes, two books -- and walk around the room with them. She will do this for half an hour at a time, picking up two shoes, putting them down at random, walking back and picking up two more shoes.

Her first beach trip was Memorial Day weekend, to the West Beach of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We didn't go in very far (water was too chilly) but she loved it! June 19 was Father's Day, so we took Dada and Grandpa to Kelsey's in Valpo for dinner. There were several other babies there, so Aria liked that -- she likes to make friends. Grandma Elsie bought her a swing as an early birthday present, so that's hung up under the deck now, on the patio.

Her 7th tooth is about halfway in now -- the lower right. Still no real words but she does say "dah" when she sees Tank... or when she is dropping food over the side of her high chair for the dogs that are waiting there. However, she can bring you any of the following when you ask for them by name: blankie, Bunny, bottle, book, Wookiee! Her favorite "lovie" is the bunny one that Auntie jessruth sent (pictured below; Vera Bradley, natch!), which has been officially named Bunny Foo-Foo and which she is usually clutching when she wakes up. She is obsessed with electrical cords and will make a beeline for anything with a cord on it (plugged in or not). She also likes magazines: diligently ripping out one page at a time, tearing it into little pieces, and eating them (!). Hopefully that behavior is on its way out. On the plus side, she has started taking more interest in books and will bring one over to be read, then consent to sit still in your lap for a minute or two while you read it.

She is remarkably determined. If you pick her up and physically remove her from some attractive nuisance (say, the dogs' water dish, the bark mulch under the tree, or the living-room cabinet), and put her on the ground even 20+ feet away, she will immediately toddle right back to it. No fuss, no crying, just calm focus.

( click for picture )

April 2 was Aria's second funeral, for Mama's uncle Terry (the first was for Mama's friend Kay's husband Bill, on January 21st). This was in Crown Point 10 minutes from our house, so we went to see Mama's Aunt Judy and cousins Tracy and Kelly. The next Thursday, Aria started showing symptoms of her first cold (coughing and sneezing), and all the next weekend she was a goopy mess -- but HATED getting her nose wiped! She was mostly better by Monday (when both Mama and Dada started to get sick) but the cough lingered for a few more days. April 22 was Aria's first Passover! We went to first-night seder at the Chabad house in Munster -- we hoped she would fall asleep before the end, but NO WAY when there was so much to see going on -- and then had one at our house for second night. Aria is eating more "finger foods" now: chunks of soft vegetables (sweet potato, broccoli, banana) that she can pick up in her whole fist and bring to her mouth. She will sit calmly in her high chair for over 90 minutes at a time as long as she's got food to play with! Her "furniture walking" has gotten much more confident, but it was just *after* her 9-month birthday that she took a couple of independent steps (two steps at a time).

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On March 20 we got "real" portraits taken at JC Penney -- now I wish we'd started doing it months earlier! It was so fun and the pictures came out beautiful. March 23 was Aria's first Purim -- we sort of dressed her up as "grunge rocker" for megillah reading at CBI on Wednesday night, but not really for the Chabad Purim seudah at the Federation on Thursday night. Still, she loved getting to crawl around some big open space and see the other little kids. She is standing up all over the place now, and will sometimes let go long enough to stand by herself for a few seconds -- but when she turns away, she falls over. Daddy thinks she's ready to take a step any day now. Her 3rd & 4th teeth have been peeking out since the beginning of March, but still haven't fully descended; not the front top teeth but the "fangs" (lateral incisors?) to the sides. Grandma Elsie says Daddy had "fangs" too and that's where she gets it. She's getting 1 meal of solid foods at lunchtime most days (sometimes a second in the evening) -- rice cereal plus a vegetable -- so far she likes green beans best, then butternut squash. Avocado gets a funny face!! Aria likes to hold and chew on Mama's big water glass (while I hold her and hold it for her); she will take real sips (but then sometimes dribbles all the water back out onto herself). Her favorite chew toy is still Sophie the Giraffe; she actually lights up when she sees it.

( Photo behind cut )