talking up a storm

I enjoy observing the development of baby-j’s words. Up until now, it’s been mostly nouns, but in the last month, he’s started to string words together.

His commands are actually descriptions or desires. Some examples:
“Try again.” (Meaning: I’m going to try something again.)
“Brush your teeth.” (Meaning: I’m going to brush my teeth. For hours at a time.)
“Come here.” (Meaning, oddly: I’m going to come there. If he wants you to “come here,” he uses…)
“Down” (Meaning: come down from the couch, or get out of bed, or anyplace else where you are comfortable, and read me a book.)

Of course, now that he can open the refrigerator door (!!!), he doesn’t need to use words as much when asking for food. Yesterday I came in to the kitchen to find him struggling with a bag of grapes he had pulled out of the fridge. Today I watched as he opened the fridge, grabbed some leftover pasta, a container of tomato sauce, and the green cylinder of Kraft parmesan cheese. I think he was going to try to figure out how to heat it up by himself if we didn’t.

It’s when he’s tired or cranky--or both--that baby-j reverts back to one word “sentences.” If P or I try to rock baby-j to sleep and he’s not being cooperative, he employs the noun-blurt technique: yelping out the names of things he sees or, in some cases, things he remembers that exist. Last night went something like this:

“Doggie!” (referring to his doggie bath towel, hanging on a hook)

“Lotion!” (referring to the bottle on the dresser that we use every night)

“Bedtime Stories!” (pronounced “beh-tahm staw-wees”)

“Mama!” (self-explanatory)

And then in desperation, as he drifted off to sleep, he sobbed,

“Cookie!” (nowhere in the vicinity)

brush your teeth

We had a lot of bathroom fun today, from experimenting with the potty seat (climbing on it, that is), to moving the stool, to turning on water, to making funny faces in the reflection of the faucet, to lining up the toothbrush just so on the sink.

Then there was a good 10 minutes when baby-j repeatedly brushed his teeth, put down the brush, ran to P, kissed him, and shouted “You’re welcome!” before P could say “Thank you.” Then back to the teeth-brushing. He’s getting very good at kissing people--as an example, the new neighbor we just met tonight--and then telling them that they are “welcome” for the kiss with the assumption that he will be thanked.

bear sighting

We had a pretty busy day, driving all over various towns trying to figure out where we might want to settle and buy a house. We’re doing lots of research, which is important, though I’ve kind of appreciated our previous way to make big decisions together. (“Um... is this the cheapest car on the lot? Yes? We’ll take it!” and “Our rent is going up. Should we buy a house? Yes? How about this one? We’ll take it!” and “Should we have a baby?” Well, you get the idea.) This decision-making process has served us well in the past, so all this background research is making me a bit nervous.

But the crazy event of my day was seeing a bear--and not in a zoo. This afternoon, I visited my friend J, who lives in a town to which we’re thinking of moving. J and I were in the front seat of her car when we saw the car in front of us put on its lights and stop. Then, behind that car and about 20 feet in front of ours, a black bear the size of J’s car lumbered from right to left across the street. In the middle of the street, it stopped, then picked up speed and ran off in between some houses.

This is a town where seeing a bear is not unheard of, but it is still remarkable. This is J’s fourth bear sighting in 15 years of living there (one of which was when one stopped her moving car in the dark). I can’t exactly describe how I felt during and immediately after the sighting. Fear mixed with awe, I guess. Wow. Just... wow.

a "worthy cause"

This makes me very frustrated:

Alumna Gives $128 Million to High School

Barbara Dodd Anderson, an alumna of the high school, yesterday used much of the fortune from that original investment to endow George School, a private, 500-student institution set on a leafy 240-acre campus in Newtown, Pa.

“It was hard for me at first, because it seems like a ghastly amount of money, but it’s going for a worthy cause,” said Ms. Anderson, who lives in Fresno, Calif., where she was once a kindergarten teacher.

I just took a look at the George School Web site. Maybe it's just me, but I can think of many, many ways to use $128 million to help educate students that wouldn't start with an elite private school in Bucks County.

sorting

Today I've been sifting and sorting diss. data. Though I can't believe I hadn't done this already at some point, I also sorted myself here.




I'm a Ravenclaw!

I think I cheated, though. If you've read at least a few of the Harry Potter books, you can fool this quiz into putting you into the house you wish. But then, that's what Harry does, right ("Gryffindor... Gryffindor...")? So are we really "fooling" anyone? A better question is: what does it say about me that I really want to be a Ravenclaw?

One of my favorite quotes from the series is this line of Dumbledore's from Goblet of Fire: "You place too much importance... on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!"

Into what house would you be sorted? And in what house would you wish to be?

this has me thinking but also irks me.

For the past year (pre-lead scares, even!), we’ve been working to cut down on the amount of plastic toys that baby-j has. We use a sorting approach: generally, plastic toys go in the bedroom, non-plastic in the living room. Since baby-j mostly plays in the living room, the non-plastic toys get more attention.

However, this current push I'm reading about in various blogs (see here, here, and here) to go “China-free” for Christmas is something that a) I am conflicted about* and b) seems nearly impossible. Really. Since the start of previously-mentioned sorting approach, almost everything in the living room is either made of wood, or is a book. Even so, when P did a further toy-sort in our living room this week, we were amazed: basically everything baby-j plays with in the living room is manufactured in China. Oh, I don’t know what to think about all this. But I am interested in Bitch Ph.D.’s take on it.

Sigh. Now I’m going to post a video of baby-j playing with a loud plastic toy because he is cute and it makes me feel better about not being a perfect mama. Forgive me. This is of baby-j, mixin’ up a mean “Pop Goes the Weasel” near the end of the video.



* e.g., Is it only products from China one should be concerned about? And carrying that banner to “free” oneself from any particular country, or place, or people is worrisome to me on many levels.

getting dissed

Progress is being made on the dissertation front. My plan is to write at least two pages (usually more) a day: every day. I shared the many reasons for this with P this weekend. I could tell he was interested in this discussion of how to write over a sustained period of time. Witness:

“Did I share all this stuff with you when I was doing my dissertation?”
“Um, yeah, you did.”
“Sorry about that.”

And thus, dear readers, I completely understand if you wish to gloss over this paragraph. I feel that if I can churn out at least 2 pages a day--whether it’s crap or not, and some of it is really, truly crap--then I shall feel I am making progress. It is interesting how 2 pages feels like much more of an accomplishment now that I have a kid. See, I can justify such small output by saying to myself, Well, I had to take care of baby-j quite a bit today, so think of how impressive those 2 pages are, having been written by hook or by crook, in between lunchtime and naptime and dinnertime and bathtime. And thus the mediocre dissertation will be written.

Mantra: The best dissertation is a done dissertation, The best dissertation is a done dissertation, The best dissertation is a done dissertation...

weird shit my kid did today

P told me that he happened upon a suspicious sight: one of the hardcover books that I’m reading for my research was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor... next to a crayon. P wondered if baby-j’d left me a nice little dedication. And indeed he had: inspired, no doubt, by the composition book that my grandmother got for him, there was a sweet little black “Z” on the first page. I'm glad it wasn't a library book.

The potty-training is more of a potty-experiencing. baby-j is excellent at putting the potty seat on the potty, and even climbing up on it. However, this is simply because it provides access to the light switch, which he can turn on and off while one knee is wedged in the hole of the potty seat for support. He can also flush now before saying “bye, bye poose,” but the “poose” involved is usually coming from the diaper, not him.

Today, as I was emptying the contents of his diaper into the toilet, he decided to throw a pretzel in, too, just for good measure.

This week’s baby-j-phrases include:

“Try, try again. Try, try again.” (I have no idea where he got this.)

“Bye, bye.” Actually, “bye, bye” isn’t new, but he just started adding, usually when closing a door in your face: “See-uh later!”

And the real stumper, the phrase P and I cannot figure out, is “Too-oh-day, too-oh-day.” Typically it is yelled in staccato: “Too! Oh! Day! / Too! Oh! Day!” and is accompanied by lots of foot-stomping. A cash prize will be awarded to any blog readers who can provide the origins and meaning of this mysterious phrase.

Also, there is much impromptu baby-j yoga going on lately. Mostly a lotta naked downward facing dog.

baby-j's addiction

...is to blueberries.

On the way in from a tricycle tour of the neighborhood this morning, P headed up to start lunch, while I let baby-j run around the house a few more times. “Don’t you want to come in for some corn, baby-j? Grapes? Yogurt?” Nothing seemed tasty enough to warrant his going inside; in fact, baby-j decided that it would be a good time to run towards the street into the path of a car that had just turned the corner. As I ran to catch him, I quickly called out, “Let’s get some blueberries.” He immediately stopped, turned around, and marched up towards the front porch. Knowing full well that we didn’t have blueberries in the house, I immediately altered the appeal: “Um, grapes, baby-j; don’t you want some grapes? Grapes... mmm... grapes.” Unfortunately, the damage had been done. He climbed up the stairs to our apartment, chanting “boo-berry, boo-berry, boo-berry.” When we got to the top, P said, “No, baby-j, no blueberries here,” as he hoisted a bowl of grapes from the fridge. “Boo-berry!” baby-j shouted. P looked at me incredulously. “I didn’t say that word.” “But I only said it once,” I protested. “To stop him from getting hit by a car!” P just shook him head, trying in vain to calm the protesting baby-j with the clearly inferior fruit.

...

Ok, I just watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugCw1UZ7ZjU. That was 1 minute, 57 seconds of me going like this: Aw! Ah! Aw! Eh! Aw! Aw! and so on.

transcription hell

Ok, first: I just realized that I have this thing set on "moderate comments," which means that I have several comments a few days old that have not been posted until now. Sorry about that; they're on the next post now. Thanks, everyone!

Also--and this is a very good point that E brings up and indeed, I mentioned it to P when he bitched about the lack of comments--why no P-comments on this blog? What's up with that? Comment on my blog, you hypocritical blog-reader! :)

Not much to report here. I'm spending the week finishing interview transcription for the dissertation, which is useful work, despite its monotony. There is one former student of mine who, while brilliant, makes me cringe eveytime I hear his voice because he is simply impossible to transcribe. He speaks very fast and his many ideas are all over the place. This means that I will likely use things he says, so I have to translate them carefully. Unfortunately, it takes me about 5 minutes per sentence.

P is at his first week at the new job this week, and I think things are going well. Until regular child care (starting next week with baby-j's babysitter K), I've spent this week squeaking in dissertation work while baby-j naps. I've also been cooking dinner. P has gamely endured my attempts at fried chickpeas, sloppy "janes," and "beef" stroganoff this week. I've gotten better at timing all this, and have only burned one cookie sheet this week. Go, me.