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| Winter 2003 |
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| January 2, 2003 I've decided that the major benefit of celebrating family Christmas on New Year's day is the leftover champagne you can use for mimosas. We had a lovely, slow day of opening presents and playing with them. Nobody got out of their jammies until 6 in the evening when I went out in search of sterno for our cheese fondue. (Had to christen the new pot, don'tcha know.) Joshua, having done all this before and still a little travel weary, napped through much of the festivities. He seems nettled in the living room--too many toys to look at all at once, I think. Today I will put together his new storage bench, which should take some of the pressure off. (Though we still have to find room for the scads of records and books due to arrive from Seattle any day now.) Our trip was wonderful--more on that later. One highlight though: Jim surprised mewith his request for our Christmas present from Kathie and Leon--a donation in our names to the Heifer Project. |
| January 23, 2003 Joshua is crawling like a fiend--and getting into everything. His newest pastime seems to be seeing how quickly he can cover the kitchen floor with plastic cups and tupperware. I think his record is about 5 minutes. He's also discovered the door bumper on the way up to the second floor. He loves to go over and flick it, and he really seems to think this is a toy that was placed there just for him. In general, he finds doors perplexing: any time he gets close enough to get a good grip on one in order to open it, he opens it right into himself, can't get out of the way, and starts to cry. His other big news is his transformation from herbivore to omnivore. So far, he's tried chicken, turkey and pork. He doesn't seem to notice much difference between them and the veggies he's been eating all along, but I'm feeling much better about his nutrition now that I'm not his sole source of protein. |
| January 30, 2003 Sadly, young Joshua is ill. He's got a little cold, AND another tooth coming in (this makes five), so he's not doing much other than eat and sleep. You'd think this would really free me up to do things like update the website, but it turns out I, too, have his cold, and since most of his eating has been in the wee hours of the morning (can you say "regression?"), I spent yesterday napping and holding him. He has taught himself to sit up from a crawling position, though I haven't actually seen him do it--just the results. Right now, it a little like magic: "Hey, weren't you on your back over there across the room a second ago?" |
| February 24, 2003 Whew. So much has happened in just a month, it's hard to know where to begin. I suppose the most important thing is Joshua's new language skills. On February 13, as I was getting his breakfast together, Joshua took a look at the banana I was about to open up for him and said, "nanana." After some experimenting and a couple of days worth of replicating the experiment, Jim and I concluded that "nanana" is definitely his first word. We're not that surprised. Today, he was walking around (with the help of my fingers) before breakfast, and he looked at the closed door to our bedroom and whispered, "da da." "OK," I said, "But dada's sleeping." We went in and Jim pulled Josh onto the bed, whereupon he said "da da da da da da," until he crawled away from Jim and over to me, at which point he started saying "ma ma ma ma ma." The went on, back and forth for some time, until he started chomping on my cheek and said "nanana." So we went and got breakfast. |
| February 27, 2003 More big news--a couple of days ago, Joshua climbed the stairs all by himself (though of course, Mom or Dad acted as spotter). The best part was when baby sitter Sarah came over and he demonstrated, looking back after each step to smile and make sure she was watching. He has yet to realize that he needs to go down the stairs backwards... His favorite game these days is to drop things into the tub. It started with his tub toys while I was in the bath, but now there's a big plastic bucket of baby food jar lids that he likes to chuck in there. He even cleans up after he's done--with some parental encouragement. |
| February 28, 2003 Well, I knew this day would come, but I kept hoping somehow it wouldn't. Joshua has discovered the toilet paper roll. This morning while I was washing my face, he stood up and pulled some down, and then set up shop on the floor, pulling, tearing and flapping it all over the place. He was absolutely delighted. If you've got the time, see for yourself. In other news, we've begun a couple of new questin and answer games. My favorite is, "Joshua, what does a Mommy say?" His answer, "No no no." Well, it isn't quite a "no," more like a "noh noh," but the sentiment is certainly accurate lately. "No, no Joshua, leave the books in the bookshelf." "No no, we don't throw banana on the rug." "No no, no biting." I suppose the day is fast approaching when he starts telling us what not to do. (In his quest to be the favorite parent, Jim is working on "Joshua, what does a Daddy say?" "Yea!" Hmm...do I detect a life-long pattern developing?) |
| March 3, 2003 This weekend, Jim and I finally went out and bought grownup bookshelves and a TV stand that doesn't threaten to tip over. To my great housekeeping relief, I also persuaded Jim that the livingroom would look good without the faux-oriental carpet we had on the floor. No more trying to walk the bumps out of the rug! Woo hoo! What does all this have to do with Joshua, you ask? Well, first off, it was rather amusing to see him wake up in the morning and explore his new living room. Even today, he'll have moments where he'll look around at the room, and then study me for a second, as if to say, "Well, you're still the same, but what happened to the house?' Second, all that moving around of stuff meant more than the usual amount of vacuuming, so I'm happy to say that Joshua finally seems desensitized to it all. Incidentally, while we were out conspicuously consuming, we found "NO!" a kids CD by They Might be Giants. You should check it out. |
| March 4, 2003 Joshua has developed a strong preference for saying Dada rather than Mama. As first, I had to fight my tendency to take this development personally, but I now see its advantages. When I get Josh up to nurse in the morning, I can fall back to sleep, or doze, anyway, while Josh crawls over and says "Dada Dada Dada Dada" until Jim rolls over and opens his eyes. Josh checks out Jim's scratchy chin and I catch a few extra z's. I might still feel bad about it if it weren't for the fact that when I come home from going out alone, Jim tells me that Josh says "Mama" when I show up. I'm sure he'd say it more often if we were ever apart from each other long enough for him to miss me. |
| March 7, 2003 Yesterday we noticed Josh's new trick. He likes to scrunch up his eyes, as though in great pain. For some reason he especially likes doing this while he's eating. Nothing seems to be wrong, but it's kind of freaky the first couple of times he does it--until you remember, "Oh, yeah, this is what you do now." Would you believe this behavior is even in the baby book for this month? Yep. They say it's just a little expeniment along the lines of "What does the world look like with my eyes closed?" Apparently hands over the ears isn't far away either. He's also learned that a high-pitched scream elicits and interesting reaction from Mommy. This is a little more difficult to ignore, but I'm determined to squelch this behavior pronto because I'm having parental clairvoyance, and I'm not liking the temper-tantrums while grocery shopping that I see in my future... |
| March 10, 2003 This morning Joshua and I drove our friend Keely to the airport, and then feasted at the airport diner together. It was a good first date for us, and the waitress was very understanding about his propensity for flinging food around. A bunch of airport employees were there, and they seemed to enjoy his company as well--more than one gave me the news that pancakes are more fun to eat than oatmeal (we tried both). Over the weekend, Dad let Joshua feed himself some spaghetti while I filmed the proceedings, so we have another movie available for viewing. Josh is calling me on the monitor (see, he does know my name too), so that's it for today. |
| March 12, 2003 Yesterday, Joshua flirted with the church ladies from Bible study. He was, as usual, very disruptive. There we were, debating the whole Iraq issue, and he's just squinting up his eyes at people, looking very cute and making them laugh. Actually, it was probably good he was there--we're a divided group when it comes to international policy. The other thing that really impressed everyone was when he saw bananas on Jean's kitchen counter, and asked for them--over and over again. Jim and I have figured out that he is no longer asking for bananas in order to eat them. No. He wants bananas because they are fun to squish up in your hands and fling across the room. I'm sure the ladies think I'm stunting his development by insisting that I hold the banana, but you know what? When we left, there was nothing on the ceiling that wasn't there when we came in. |
| March 14, 2003 Today Joshua and I went to the mall to meet some other moms and babies. We "met" on the Illinois discussion board at the baby center. I'm thrilled to have met a few women in my area--one of whom had her daughter days before I had Josh at the same hospital. For Josh's part, he was very interested in a toy that one of the other babies had, but was very good about not taking it when I told him no. Also, when he met the other 10-month-old, they nodded their heads toward each other and touched noses. I hope that I would have thought it was cute even if it wasn't my son doing it, but at the same time I got a little saccharine chill--I mean, that's the kind of thing that Hallmark or AT&T puts in their commercials so that you'll believe their mega-monster-businesses are run by humans. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next meeting. Josh could use some friends of his height, and I could use some friends of my sanity level. (Not that those of you reading this aren't adequately insane for my taste--but you're so far away.) |
| March 21, 2003 It's been a rough week for Josh and me--we're readjusting the nap schedule, which is alw2ays trying. As cccccc YOu can sEE, Josh is sitting with me right now and can' t resist adding his ownc thoughts. vbnbn bn bn bn bn bn bn bn nnb OK, I think I'll turn this entry over to him. (Maybr I'll take ghis spot when he isn't lookiing.) f Wsam jmn Z I I ca ihhi hi hi hi hi jAKkllKK>K>K>kk. ddd w 8jk, k k N |