This has been a big one: you learned how spoons work, how they can get yogurt from the baby yogurt cup into your mouth, if you hold the spoon by the handle and dip it in the baby yogurt cup and then there is yogurt on it, and then the yogurt can go into your mouth on the spoon and then you are eating yogurt! This is fantastic! But you don't quite get when the yogurt cup is empty and there is no more yogurt in it: because this is where yogurt comes from. There must always be more yogurt. Mommy will attempt to make sure of this. I am pretty sure you learned how spoons work from baby P at the baby group, who is maybe two and a half months older than you and can feed himself, and you always learn something at the baby group and this time you got lucky. Little learning machine.

Also phenom: you learned to wave at people (and at dogs, and birds, and trees, and the sky, and at billboards) and then they smile and wave back at you and you are getting so much more love on the subway now. The baby group, too, the other moms were very impressed - you're still the second youngest and here you are being all grown up. It is "just" imitating but it is also the precursor to conversation, right? Or something. I did not realize that it was possible to get more love than you were already getting but here it is: and it's like being a minor celebrity. Everyone smiles. Not just the mommy types who always did, not just the wistful grandmothers, but bankers in suits, teenagers with green hair and bridge piercings, little old men in worn sweaters, reserved women in hijab, men in shiny orange construction uniforms, kids, other babies, everyone.

And and and (it's been a big week) you learned how to splash in the bathtub. I think the French bath toys helped as you first noticed that they splashed when you threw them, and that was kind of fun, and then you dropped one, and it made a splash, and then you made a giant mess and got Mommy all splashed on and i think you got a pretty large volume of water out of the bathtub and it was really funny and then you were so, so tired afterwards, because making a ruckus like that is exhausting, and so then also you slept last night better than you had been in a while, you'd been doing that thing again where you wake up at two AM and want to play and just. aren't. sleepy, and so when you had a big dinner (pasta and yogurt and pretzels and baby-spaghetti and half a banana and then milk) and then you got so thoroughly tired and then, finally, then, then you slept and slept and slept. It gets old fast when you want to play at two AM. And since you sleep so well most of the time, Mommy and Daddy get used to having enough sleep, and then when we don't it's reallly debilitating.

Note that the not sleeping started the day you went to Burgenland and i don't think you enjoyed the car ride, but where were you going in at the Neusiedlersee? Basically Disneyland. You so have the best tagesmutter ever. And then your nap schedule was shot to hell from all the excitement and it just takes a long, long time to normalize, but you really liked it, so there's that.

And we went to the zoo again and you liked the colorful birds, the peacocks, the cranes, those funny decorated penguins. The peacock especially was grooming himself so he was up and doing stuff and poking his little birdy head around and putting on a show. Too many of the animals are very small (like all the rabbits and prairie dogs near the playground) or brownish gray (like the elephants and the rhinoceros) or slow-moving (like the lion and the giraffes and the zebra) and therefore boring. But the petting zoo was fun: goats! Friendly, soft, pretty, high-contrast, nearby, and active goats, that nuzzle you and are soft and pettable! And you didn't want to sleep at the zoo either, but we made it happen somehow anyway. I would say that we're getting better at this game but that would only jinx it.

Labels: baby, milestones

That is a lot of weeks. I'm just sayin'.

You have figured out how to drink from a straw, and you have figured out how to get onto the futon from any angle and any side. Notably the high part in the front, when it is folded into a couch.

You are still a lovely little travel bug, being very good on the train to both the Czech Republic and to Budapest. Also we have learned while borrowing P's car seat (which was already installed, and we figured it was safer to put you in it than to take it apart) that you don't appear to mind riding in cars if you are facing the front, rather than facing the back like you're supposed to until you're one. But seeing as how you'll be riding in cars approximately only twice more between now and your first birthday (which is in, gulp, a month and a half), and having Happy Mama and Forward-Facing, Chill Baby is probably much safer for everybody on the road than having Panicky Mama Attempting To Soothe Backward-Facing Screaming Like She's Possessed By A Demon Howler Monkey Baby, a decision has been made. If you prove at some point on the long long car trip to also strenuously object to riding forward-facing, then you're going in backwards again.

Oh, except i think the tagesmutter is taking you all to Burgenland tomorrow. In her car. (Which is all of a twenty minute drive - they call it a state but in terms of what we're used to, it is just slightly larger than Rhode Island, and it's still only the third smallest. But here we can be in another country in under an hour.) Anyway, i'm not going: and so if you are screamy in the car, it is all her and her magical powers, and i am blissfully unaware. She does take you on wonderful field trips, Little - not just to the pool and the zoo, but big open fields and forests and i don't know where all. Obviously we are going to have to get you the anti-tick-encephalitis vaccine when you hit the big 0-1.

And you did like the food in Hungary. Of course you did: there was breakfast, and they have paprika for breakfast, lescho with peppers and eggs and sausages, and paprikas for lunch and paprikas for dinner, and eggy noodles and dumplings, and breads, and fruits and yogurt and sweet things.

Except what with you liking the food, whatever i got my food poisoning from, you didn't get as much of it, but you got a decent bit, and were accordingly grouchy and explosive. We went through enough diapers to fill a Volkswagen. And since i was sick and completely out of it, i'm not entirely sure, but i think you were in disposable dipes the whole time - rather easier than washing out dozens of possibly pathogenic clothies. And that's without taking into account that we're starting to wear out the clothies - they're on at least their third baby, now, with you, all those prefolds, and if Mom is right about the contour ones (the ones i keep thinking might be good to use as liners, they're so teency, but that we don't actually use that much) then they might even be on their third generation, so if they're starting to wear thin in spots then they've had a damned good run of it. But we are starting to use some of them for cleaning up other things with and then tossing them - once they are actually see-thru they are not so very absorbent any more. And of course the slightly stretchy ones i liked are the ones that are going downhill fastest. Sadly.

I bet if we had been putting them in the clothes dryer instead of line drying them they'd be all entirely disintegrated by now, though. So there's that. Go us!

I keep thinking you are going to start walking but you haven't yet.

We're still breastfeeding, but being sick was a hell of a wrench. My supply was entirely weird, so so so low, and i know you were getting formula while i was sleeping, which probably didn't help your poor tummy, and i'm sorry. And i have decided that, finally, i can't deal with this any more, and i'm going to try and wean you from one side and just feed you with the other. The thrush itself is gone but i'm all cracked and chapped and every time you even look at that side i stiffen up because i know it's going to hurt, it's like picking a neverending scab in a Very Sensitive Area, and so you're all done with Righty. I've got cabbage leaves on it and we'll see how that does. But i've been nursing you preferentially on the other for a while already and you can go a whole day nursing on just the left, so i think this is a possible solution. I thought being sick had given me enough time to heal and i looked better but then you nursed on that side and it was right back to where it was, scaly and red and flaking and cracked and just about on fire, and honey, i love you, i do, but you'll be one in a month and a half, and if that's the goalpost then i can do that with one side. I think. And if i can't do that with one side then somehow i will learn to live with myself.

Either way i am going to smell like cabbage later.

Labels: baby, breastfeeding, milestones

Monday i was too sick to feel like anything. I have no recollection of it.

Tuesday i felt like the walking dead. Except that i was not walking, only to the doctor around the corner and the pharmacist on the next block and then straight back home again. The doctor was nicer this time - i think he had done some more recent research - and said i didn't have to stop breastfeeding, and prescribed me Imodium and charcoal tablets.

Wednesday i felt like the Angry Pink River of Eastern European Angriness from Ghostbusters II was my gastrointestinal tract. And it was angry. And i was still not particularly walking, or doing anything else. But i had a cracker and some apple juice. Charcoal tablets are big fat horse pills and hard to swallow.

Thursday i felt like that time Coach swallowed the tequila worm with one eye. Also ate some rice.

Friday i felt like that moment just before the Alien pops out of Secondary Character's belly. I think i had some soup.

Saturday i just felt awful but had a quesadilla. (Here in Vienna, quesadillas consist of plastic-packaged wheat tortillas, which are the only ones easily found, since i haven't tried making my own tortillas yet, and gouda cheese, which is the closest thing to anything.)

Sunday, today, i feel almost like a person with an upset tummy. See how every day is just a little bit better than the day before? This is a discouragingly slow recovery.

Labels: health

Mommy has food poisoning. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Labels: health

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
with your sprained wrist men-is-cus
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
hope your Lyme disease goes a-way
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
O, he's the best dad-dy
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
we live in a zoo
our girl is a mon-key
but Darwin was too.

yes, yes, i have been busy. And it was last week, yeah. But we were travelling and there were people here and it's far more fun to do those things than blog. This is why i put down the camera sometimes - because people are starting to call me a bit of a shutterbug when i have it, i take photos like a paparazzo - so i resist the urge to document it all. Deliberately. And this means that i miss shots and that i skip writing things that i should write (see also: M's family's thank you letters) but living this is what i am doing, first, not archiving. So now M is off playing poker at B's and E is sleeping and the fam is off in their rented apartment on the other side of Rennweg, they're staying in the Balkans, ha, and A and L have flown away home, and there's me and the dog and the dog is asleep on the floor. But this is still me going to bed instead of uploading more things to Flickr like i said i would. Meh, maybe tomorrow.

Labels: blogging, family, festivities, health, writing

was when you, my little world traveller, got two new teeth for a total of six, and when you pulled up and let go. No unassisted steps yet, and you weren't standing for even a second, but you did it. And now i can believe you are going to be really walking and running around and at some point we are going to switch from calling you a baby to calling you a toddler - and that's such a lovely word, now, somehow. Like bum. Bum goes bum! when you fall on it. Very onomatopoeia.

Went to the Czech Republic, again, to the little village, with Daddy of course but also L and A and met K and M and D and P there - and P is just not quite two and you played together beautifully and it was really cute and many photos were taken (Flickr friends will note this. P is the little angel-headed curly tot). And we did indeed go swimming every day last week, including at K's parents' house. And you were very good on the train despite us not having a compartment on the way back so you couldn't get down and crawl. This weekend we are going to Budapest and that train ride is four hours, instead of one and a half, so probably then if we don't get a compartment it might be much more complicated and we won't have any more people to hold you then than we did now, except L was sleeping on the train, so maybe one more, except if i can help it i'll be sleeping, so maybe not. Except, again, that M needs to sleep more than me as he's got Lyme disease and a busted hand.

so, yeah, that's been fun. And with M's busted hand he can't walk the dog, which wouldn't matter except i got no sleep last night with first going to the outdoor opera with L and A and then you woke up at two in the morning, hungry, and all that not sleeping was bad for Mommy's head and my body decided it was payback time with a migraine. Not an awful migraine, but still. V. glad i don't get them more often. Once a year is way more than enough.

You like to eat food. We went to the pediatrician for your regular checkup and you are 8.9kg, and 72cm, right on the 50th percentile Austrian for height (and it's height, now, not length, because baby can stand up) and about the 55th for weight, which makes me feel better because i thought you were looking like a baby that was all long and tall, limbs all over the place, legs hanging off the far side of my lap. Your feet are too big for the twelve month Robeez shoes now. And they say breastfed babies usually go like this on the formula baby charts, that they fall down percentages, so i'm not particularly worried by it. The ped says you're meeting all your milestones, and that since me and Daddy both wear glasses we have to get your eyes checked when you're two (i'm not sure how they check baby eyes; but you can point at a dog alllllll the way down the block), and that you're a very nice baby. You didn't scream at this appointment: the stethoscope was cold, compared to how warm he keeps his office, especially, but at ten months you didn't get any shots.

Next time you get chickenpox/flu, tick-borne encephalitis (in Austria, that one is important), and MMR. We might ask to make sure - the MMR is the one people have a reaction to, so we might give you MMR at one appointment and then chickenpox and flu and TBE a week later. Boy would you hate the doctor then. But i told him i wanted to go mostly by the American schedule and he said that was fine - and if we give you MMR at 12 months, then that is october, and flu in flu season, can be november, and we can do chickenpox later until you are six, and the tick thing won't kick in again until summer. Um, plus the ped doesn't take bankomat cards, and i never know how much cash to bring for your shots - the basic ones are free, but we had to pay for some - and i know the flu one and the TBE are optional.

I think you are going to like Hungary, bunny bunny - though i have to start calling you monkey monkey instead, because now you can really get onto the futon by yourself and i think you are becoming a Climber based on the way you are always trying to pull up above the top of my head, clawing your way up, and hanging on my earrings - there is so much good food there, potatoes and langos with cream and savoury pancakes and goulash and bread and i have to remember what that thing is called with the raisins that have been soaked in liquor. aha! When one googles "Hungarian dessert raisins" Google gives you: Somloi Galuska, the rum-soaked chocolatey walnuttey vanilla-spongecake-lemony atherosclerosis-in-a-bowl with the whipped cream on top. This is your heritage, all this food. But then i ask for Velveeta and Quaker brand instant oatmeal, strawberries and cream flavor, specifically, from the states, and my parents think, what, we never gave her that. Or the Cajun things i learned, or how my chili is so many miles better than Dad's (tip number one, old chap: leave out the carrots! are you mad?), or the way i always want hot and sour soup and fried rice when i'm sick. Baby girl, you won't be the same person as i am, but one word we should teach you is going to be umami. Mmmmm. More onomatopoeia: ummummmy, which is the sound one makes when one's mouth is full and happy. It's a good sound to be very familiar with, and we'll do our best.

Labels: baby, milestones

*not very factual on motorcycles either

:anmut: :annika: :chin: :dooce: :ewok mama: :food: :little frog school: :lj: :longform: :low odysseys: :natalya: :rich: :salon: :slate: :this is how: :unique yn:



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