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| Spring 2003 |
| To view other entries, click below: Sept/Oct Nov/Dec Winter 2003 January 2004 |
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| April 7, 2003 As pennance for not updating the site in a while, here is a new movie for your viewing pleasure. However, Josh is saying "na na," so that'll have to be all until after lunch. Update: April 9 I meant to explain what was going on in this movie, and then I never did get a chance to add to my entry. You see, we have this new game at the dinner table, after Josh is mostly finished. What Jim is doing in the movie is looking all over the room, avoiding Josh's gaze, until, all of a sudden, he snaps his head around and looks right at Joshua. Josh loves it, even though it often startles him. So when I zoom in on Josh and you see him blink and then start laughing, you know Jim's just done it again. |
| April 8, 2003 Joshua's newest achievement is figuring out how to use his walker. About two months ago, when he was first starting to pull up on things with some proficiency, I brought home two toys for him to practice on: a freestanding toy that allows him to drop balls in a hole and watch as they roll down a spiral ramp, and a little bike-like thing that he was supposed to walk behind. He didn't take to that second one--it scared him a little, I think. I'd mentally consigned it to Good Will when all of a sudden, he's started walking all over the house with it. He's even learned to steer. I swear, he wouldn't even use it two weeks ago. Experienced mothers keep telling me to keep him from walking for as long as possible. They tell me life will never be the same. So far everyone's stopped short of telling me to bind his feet or cut off his toes. It looks like it won't be long before I find out for myself what all the fuss is about. |
| April 9, 2003 There are days when I feel I am living in paradise. Nothing special happens; it's just the cumulative effect of so many days of happiness, I suppose. Today is kind of like that. Joshua is sleeping. He had a great time at breakfast because we went for a trip to the store for bananas and stopped at the bakery for brioches. Not a terribly healthy breakfast, but an enthusiastically consumed one. Josh was still in his crib when Jim left for work, and kept asking for him, so we gave him a call. Lately, when I hold the receiver to his ear, Joshua gets a big smile and looks at me, wide-eyed. Some days, like today, he looks at me and says, "Dada," as if he needs to announce this miracle. If we were calling God Himself, a person couldn't be more bowled over than Josh. Sometimes he tries to kiss the phone. I hope this doesn't disturb Jim's day too much, because I really love to watch Josh listen to his dad. I have a sense that Jim is slowly aquiring Most-Favored Parent status. I don't feel sad about this, as I always imagined mothers did when they told me their two-year-olds only wanted their dads. It's odd. I look at Josh and I feel astounded by his ability to adore. I watch them together, watch their own private relationship with its special games and grammars, and I wonder at Josh's ability to have a life and relationships that are completely his own, unmediated by me. |
| April 10, 2003 Yesterday our friend Bill came over to observe Joshua. Bill's taking a child development class at the U of I and wanted to see the stuff he was learning in the flesh. The cool thing was, Jim and I both started experiementing with the boy and discovered that he's capable of all sorts of things. I knew he would get something if I asked him for it. In fact, when I ask him if he wants to read a book, he crawls straight to his bookshelf and picks one out. We were surprised, though, when Jim set a bunch of items in front of him and started asking for them one by one. After a few false starts, Josh would pick out the appropriate item (ball, duck or bubbles) every time. As you can see at left, we also discovered that he could say duck. He's seemed to say bubbles a couple of times, but we're not counting it until we're sure that's what he means. His fondness for his father increases steadily. For the second day in a row, he protested dramatically when Jim left this morning. He stands at the door or window, looking for him to come back. Oh, it's so, so sorrowful. I don't know if it comes from a new appreciation for a parent who sticks around in the morning, but his use of mama has increased considerably. In fact, he's saying it right now... |
| April 12, 2003 Yesterday, Joshua helped me mow the grass. I put him in our baby-carrying sling, and then continued the lawn-mowing I'd started when he was napping. As people drove by, I realized how stereotypically "crunchy" we must have looked. There we are out in front of the house with a NO IRAQ WAR poster in the window, pushing a manual mower with the baby in a purple ikat baby sling. Soon, but not before Josh got sick of it, it was time to go meet Dada at the bus stop. Metting Dada at the bus stop has its own sterotype-baggage for me, but Joshua loves to do it, and since he spends about an hour of every day asking for his Dada, I'm happy to take him to him when the opportunity arises. |
| April 12, 2003 Who knew there was a decent zoo in Decatur, Illinois? Almost sounds like a question worthy of Dr. Seuss. But it's true. Granted, most of the animals were native to these United States, but we had a great time strolling Josh around and introducing him to turkeys, getting the wolves to howl (at the request of the staff who were giving a presentation) and getting as close as possible to the free-range peacocks. Josh's favorite part was the petting zoo, where he got to touch the goats. We've been really working hard at having time together on the weekends. It's crazy--Josh is growing so much, he seems like a completely different person from month to month. He's already aquired that intelligent look--the one that makes him look more like a boy and less like a baby. As if he's gone from freshman to senior in the high school of life. |
| April 29, 2003 Well, Joshua has had a regular language explosion here lately, as you can see from the "dictionary" at left. All day yesterday, he walked around saying "buh buh." At first I thought he just really wanted to play with the bubbles, but after a few sessions of blowing and being ignored, I decided he was saying it just because he could. In other news, I've discovered the first evidence for gender differences being hard-wired: we have a new slipcover for our couch, which requires straightenning every morning and periodically during the day. In anticipation of a guest, I was straightenning it out, smoothing the wrinkles back into the folds of the couch, when Joshua decided to help--by yanking all the fabric back out. Just like a man--even when he's trying to help with the house, he just doesn't understand how. |
| April 30, 2003 Today, Joshua and I will go out and find a little duck stamp to put on the invitations to his first birthday party. We're making them since we only need three. We're going with a duck, banana and bubbles theme. All words he can say, don'tcha know. I'm looking forward to making the banana-flavored cake, although I'm pretty bummed that we won't be able to put Nutella between the layers because of the hazlenuts. That reminds me, Joshua had his first bite of chocolate on Easter morning. He seemed to like it pretty well, though that didn't keep him from sharing some of it with Daddy's shirt. Later that day, Jim gave Josh a banana and Josh seemed confused: "This looks like a banana, but bananas usually taste so good and sweet, and this isn't even as good as that brown stuff this morning..." |
| May 15, 2003 Here's the page I made for Josh's birthday. |
| May 21, 2003 Josh's birthday was really fun. He didn't really "get" what the fuss was about, but I think he had a good time. We waited until Jim got home from work to open presents, and Joshua surprised us both by opening one or two of them, and by playing with the toys rather than the boxes. He loved everything he got, including the stuff that we picked out (the night before his birthday). I feel tremendous pride when we pick a present that he actually plays with: like I'm doing my job well, or something. (When we pick something he doesn't like, I just chalk it up to the unpredictability of babies...) In other news, he's entered the brave new world of walking independently. I'm working on a longer movie, but for now, there's this. |
| May 22, 2003 More big news: Joshua gets to face front in the car now. I love checking out what he's doing in the mirror. He seems to enjoy having more to see, too. Last night he started welking around just for fun--without any prompting from Jim or me. Jim (who doesn't read the website much) was completely bowled over by this. I was pretty impressed, too. I was more impresses when Joshua crossed the whole room on his feet. It's like he's a new person every day. It was less than two weeks ago that he took his first steps. |
| May 23, 2003 Lately Joshua snuggles up to me every time we're getting ready for a nap. I hold him against my shoulder while I wrap the blanket around him, and he just sinks into me. Sometimes he gives me a kiss. Sometimes he even gives me a kiss without biting me. I think it's very interesting that he's developed this sweet behavior at the exact same time that he's started to get very picky (some might say whiney and obnoxious) about what he will and won't eat. I've also read that the clinginess he's been displaying lately (will I ever again go to the bathroom in peace?) often shows up around the time a kid gets more mobile. Another useful convergence of adaptive traits. |
| June 5, 2003 Lately, Joshua's language acquisition has been tempered by his obsession with balls. "Ball" is the first thing he says when he gets up and the last thing he says when he goes to bed. His favorite thing to do is to stand at the top of the stairs and hoist his balls over the baby gate and watch them bounce down the stairs. I'm worried he's going to lose all respect for me when he discovers that I can't throw. |
| September 2, 2003 So it's been about three months, but what's three months in the life of a one-year-old? I apologize for being so lax about the website this summer. My one consolation is that we've visited just about everyone who checks the site, so you've been able to see him in the flesh. Josh's big news right now is that things are back to normal--he's sleeping in his own bed and there aren't any more new people around. After a trip to Indiana in June, Seattle in July imediately followed by a visit from my friend Liz, we spent the last two weeks driving to the east coast and brining my neice back for a week-long visit. Josh stayed in a tent for the first time, as well as his first four-star hotel (Priceline is a wonderful thing). We climbed two mountains this summer (here's Josh and Jim at the top of the one we finished in the rain), visited two caves, and saw the liberty bell. Whew. I think I speak for the family when I say that the attraction we've been most interested in lately is bed. |
| September 5, 2003 Today, Josh and I spent about an hour looking at all the stuffed animals he has. One by one, he took them down from their shelf, and brought them over for me to hug. After this, he started handing me all the bears. He handed me one and said "Bi," it took me several corrections, "Bear," "Bi," "Bear," before I finally realized he was saying "Big." Jim's introduced the concept of big with the balls, but we didn't think he really got it. Maybe he does. It seems like a lot of our interaction with Josh involves one of us parents going to the other one and saying, "He doesn't mean that, does he?" In other news, Josh played with the safety scissors and looked in the mirror while I cut his hair today. I know now why everyone looks like such a dork in their baby pictures. You try to get an even line of bangs across the forehead of a child who just wants to get down and throw his ball around. |
| September 5, 2003 I was cleaning house yeasterday when Josh started shouting, "O, S, T" he was standing in front of our boxes of games and reading off the letters. He's so crazy about letters and language these days. Dad and Susan sent us some DVDs, which Josh loves. Lately, he's been looking at the language one, in which people count and recite the alphabet in different languages while the camera shows fish or toys or big black lines. He's totally captivated by it, and any time someone starts reciting an alphabet in a foreing tongue, he starts shouting out letters. He's also learned to dance. It mostly consists of bending his knees and bouncing up and down, but he's proud of himself. He loves the CD player and ruined his first CD yesterday. It was actually a pirated album given to us by friends, so maybe his been listening to the news about the lawsuits and decided to destroy the evidence. |
| September 24, 2003 This morning, Jim and I awoke to cries of "A! D! E!" I've hung letters on Josh's walls, you see, so he like to look around and name them. Sometimes at night, we have to walk around the room so he can touch each one before going to bed. I think he considers them friends--like his stuffed animals. He's also very interested in containers with lids, which can makes mornings in the kitchen a bit drawn out. He wants to open the sugar bowl, the teapot, the coffee canister, the cookie jar. Fortunately, there are never cookies in the cookie jar, and he hasn't figured out what the sugar tastes like. Yesterday he also discovered the joys of beans. I made baked means for dinner, and shook the dry beans in their jar. That was it for Josh, I put some in a tupperware container for him to shake, and then he spent a good half hour pouring the rest on the floor, sweeping them up, dumping them into a bowl, and starting over again. Not a bad toy for a dollar a pound. |
| October 13, 2003 Today Joshua nearly spelled hot on his own. Actually, he spelled ho and told me it was hot. When I told him he needed the "t, t, t" sound, he got the T and put it in front of the H. I didn't push it after that. We had a great time at the park Saturday. We went for a walk on the sculpture garden path and found a new interactive sculpture had been added. It had curvy metal pipes fitted with horn-like cones that you could put a mouth or ear up to. We had fun talking and whispering into them, and Josh liked the big gate that swung around. Josh walked on his own for much of the excursion, with the result that we were going slow enough to notice the wildlife: a cool catepillar, funky bugs, a half dozen pheasants on the wing, and gorgeous sumac trees in all phases of their journey from green to scarlet. Illinois has its charms. Especially in the fall. |
| October 22, 2003 Josh's favorite new mealtime game is to ask me to feed his food to people who aren't there. He'll be chomping on his banana, and then he'll hand it to me, saying "Mama," which means, "Now you have some, Mama." So I'll pretend to have a nibble. Then he'll say, "Dada," and I'll say, "Daddy's at work." But he insists, "Dada," so then I reach across the table to the invisible Jim, and make eating noises. Then it's "Liz," and "Ferrin," the last two people who visited us. The best is when he insists that I go get his cousin Ferrin's picture from the book case so he can watch me feed her photo. He's also interested in French right now. He has this language DVD that Susan (Dad's new wife) sent him when he was born, and there's a vocabulary section that he asks for by saying "Dog" (the first picture in the series). Lately, he's been saying "French." When we put it on, and he's started repeating some of the words. It's pretty cute to see him standing there, going, "Le Dee-no-sore...Le Ro-bo..La Cloone." |
| October 23, 2003 Tomorrow I leave for Newport to attend a wedding. Joshua and Jim are staying home together, so this will be the first time I've ever been apart from my baby overnight. I tried to prepare Joshua for it, telling him I'm going on a plane and I'll be gone for four days. He perked up a little when I said that: "Four...days... five...days...six...seven..." Of course, I don't think he gets it, but I thought I should at least try to get the idea across that we're going to disturb his routine. I've talked to some other mothers about the First Night Away, and the all agree that they were emotional wrecks, at least to begin with. One friend said, "The first time I went away after Madeline (her oldest) was born, my mother told me I'd cry all the way to the airport and then have a great time, and that's pretty much what happened." I'll let you know. In the event that I'm not blubbering the whole time, I've made no social arrangements other than the wedding. I'm staying at an undisclosed location and making the weekend into a little writers retreat, where I'll work on my novel and the little pins I've been selling at the farmers' market. |
| November 6, 2003 Well, the weekend retreat was phenomenal. Since I've been back, I've been writing every day, and Josh and I get out for more walks. It's amazing what a little time away can do for a mother's psyche. Two stories about my return: First of all, Jim and Josh came to get me, and when I tried to pick up Joshua and give him a hug, he started to cry and ran for Dada. Even though I had been prepared for this by my experienced mother friends, I was still crushed. CRUSHED, I say. I won him back though, when I let him walk around in the parking lot with me instead of getting into his car seat like his dad wanted him to. Also, I had atttributed my sense of well-being to staying with a woman who is gifted at hospitality, combined with being able, for the first time in a year and a half, to go out and not have to worry about when I needed to get back, and a general sense of quiet and peace that pervades life on Jamestown. What I realized the morning after I got back is that all of those things are nothing campared to three days without dirty diapers. In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the link to the little pins I've been selling at the farmers' market. |
| December 3, 2003 Got home from Seattle last night. What a great trip we had. And Jim's mom is so organized; we got to see the house all done up for Christmas before we left. Jim got to eat his favorite chocolate chip Christmas cookies, and I got to make lots of new pins for my craft show this weekend. Josh? Oh, yeah. Well, as you can see above, his big news is that he had a proper haircut. Kathie took us to my favorite Seattle mall to pick out our Christmas presents, and while we were there, we got an appointment at a toystore/clothing store/hair salon for kids. Most of the barber chairs were either trucks or rocking horses, and as our photo essay shows, there are any number of anit-tantrum props at the disposal of staff and parents. I had a great time, especially because there were three other adults soliticing cheerful behavior from our Joshy boy, so I just sat back and watched. I like the crying pictures best. They're funny because they're true. Josh is either memorizing the beginning consonents to a bunch of words, or else he's starting to grasp the concept. More on that later. |