bakin'

I've taken to baking and doing other things around the house on Friday afternoons. It's a needed relaxation after sitting in front of the computer/steering wheel for most of the rest of the week.

Today I made a version of these chocolate with peanut-butter filling cookies (only the ones I made were from my Big Cookie Book). Mmmm.

new words!

Our neighbor L. asked if I have been recording the new baby-j words, and I haven’t, so here are some from the past week:

oval (Heard by both me and K, on separate occasions, when actually looking at an oval!)

f*ckie (We’re not sure what he’s referring to with this one. P. maintains that he’s saying “Frankie,” a reference to a stuffed frog that I named and so baby-j’s new word f*ckie is all my fault.)

ah-ight (Referring to “light,” not some super-cool pronunciation of “alright.”)

up (I think he means “on” when he says this, as in turn “on” the “ah-ight.” So there’s a lot of gesturing to the ceiling and “Ah-ight. Up. Ah-ight. Up.”)

baby-j, you ah-ight up my life.

Ok, time to stop blogging and finish alphabetizing and checking the 300 references for my proposal. I will, I WILL get this damn thing finished this weekend and defended this semester.

bruises, part 2

Ok, so I know this blog will get boring quickly if I keep chronicling baby-j's bruises, as he is likely to have many more of them in the coming months (days? minutes?). So I'll be quick: we had a slight scare last night and almost a trip to the emergency room when baby-j fell down about 6 attic steps. He landed head-first into the wastepaper basket, which I think saved him a bit. No goose-egg on the forehead, but he is now sporting a Harry Potter scar. As long as I know he's going to be ok, the scar is even a bit cute to me.

matching bruises

baby-j’s tendency to flip over benches has us both bruised this week.

Some background: our dining room table is a family “heirloom,” originally used by my grandmother for a dancing school she founded and ran in the 1950s. It’s not a formal table; it’s a sawbuck table with benches on both sides... ok, it’s basically a glorified picnic bench. Even though my grandmother wouldn’t dream of putting it anywhere in her house (she’s an interior decorator for the wealthy and consequently her tastes have changed accordingly), the few times she’s come to visit, she compliments us on it. Well, I guess she’s complimenting herself, as it’s hers. She always reminds us to keep it in the family if we decide not to use it anymore. My family gives us those kind of reminders quite a bit, knowing how our constant moving has turned us into frequent Freecyclers.

Anyway, baby-j likes to pull over the benches and then slide them around the front room of the house, as seen here recently with his cousins. We’ve given up turning the bench back over for the most part and usually leave it upside down, another addition to the kid-inspired décor of the front room. Yesterday morning, the bench was right about where it appears in this picture when, in a tired haze, I ran down the stairs to head into the kitchen and tripped over the corner. I yelped loudly; as a result, baby-j began to cry in his highchair, and P was forced to try and calm both of us down at the same time. I knew that it was bad, but I didn’t realize that when I got to work and took off my sock, I would discover the toe next to my pinkie toe to be black. I don’t know if it’s broken, but from what I hear I guess there’s not much that can be done anyway. My students were remarkably concerned as I taught my classes sitting down yesterday: I’d like to think it was out of genuine concern rather than the appeal of my having to stay home for a few days. Unfortunately for them, my driving foot was not the one affected.

No, it’s my left foot, just like the spider (?) bite that I got this summer. Unlike this summer, however, I’ve made a decision not to risk comments and make any more readers of this blog ill by posting pictures. :)

Apparently, I was not the bench’s only victim. P informs me that a few hours after I limped out the door, baby-j tripped over the bench yesterday while I was at work, giving him a scary-looking bruise on his chest. He seems to be doing well and not harboring any resentment toward the bench, which has already slid back and forth across the room several times today.

diaper update

Most weeks, baby-j splits the time between mom and dad: P and I go in to teach every other day. This ideal has been marred recently as I’ve had to go in, say, four times a week rather than two or three, but in general, baby-j has a “mom day” followed by a “dad day.” Having to cram a full-time teaching load into 2-3 days means that I don’t get home until 9:30 or 10:30 at night. When P has rehearsal, he gets home even later. The inevitable result is that P and I swap abbreviated baby-j updates either late at night or early in the morning. We don’t always have time to share everything.

And since baby-j can’t talk yet, how wonderful that the contents of a diaper tell a story.

I know, for example, that yesterday P must have fed baby-j some corn (a relative newcomer to the baby-j diet), and perhaps some oats. In addition, it looks like baby-j read--or rather, consumed--some kind of story with the word “sleep” in it.

I hasten to add that this is not a criticism of P; I admire his determination to add new foods (i.e., the corn) to baby-j’s diet slowly but consistently. And as for the book page, well, it was a very small piece of paper, especially compared to the entire bar code sticker from Barnes and Noble that we found in his diaper several months back, presumably devoured on my watch.

shake it like a polaroid picture

Yesterday we got baby-j's first pair of hard-soled shoes. (We've gone through a few pair of Robeez already, but we needed something he could wear outside, especially when it's when wet... a few bouts of "pruny feet" settled that.) After an unsuccessful trip trying on shoes at Target, we decided to get his feet measured at an actual shoe store.

So here's the style we got: KX500. Although we didn't plan it, they're New Balance, like his dad's sneakers. Actually, we didn't plan on sneakers at all: we basically bought these shoes like we buy our pre-owned cars. ("...so what are the cheapest ones you have in the store?") He'll be in a bigger size in 3 months anyway.

After realizing that these would be his first hard-soled shoes, a few tears were shed (by me--what a wuss I am), and the salesperson took a Polaroid photo of baby-j that went immediately in their custom "First Steps" card, with his name, date, brand, and size. (For what it's worth, baby-j is a size 7 extra wide. Yikes!) The shoe store has got the marketing down, haven't they?

stage four

I've been known to take many a photo-shoot of baby-j.

There are several stages involved in the baby photo-shoot. Stage One, or "Camera on the Other Side of the Room," features full-length shots (as seen in nice legs). Stages Two and Three, those that I like to refer to as "Bewildered Candids" and "Wandering Towards Mom," produce the best shots, featuring a purposeful baby-j, usually with toy or half-eaten book still in hand.

This is baby-j in Stage Four, otherwise known as "Camera Attack." Half-eaten books are forgotten at this point.

Photos taken in Stage Five, or "Camera Grab," are often deleted immediately after being downloaded from the camera. They typically depict a blurry bald head and a flash of teeth.