I took the little one toy shopping (because we're here for two weeks with no appointed babysitter and I desperately need to get a ton of work done before the conference next week-end).
I strategically placed here in front of a whole lot of toys to see which would catch her attention (I do that with clothes too!). Well, what do you know? best toy #1: an empty clothes hanger... best toy #2: a piece of cardboard.
I still came away with an armful of toys (to take back since they were super cheap). Of course she's been mostly playing with the wrappers so far!
And in other news, she's toddling her way towards toddlerhood: more insistently having us help her walk around everywhere, and less and less enjoying sitting and watching.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Friday, August 25, 2006
Groceries
Reese's pieces... oreos... turkey jerkey, butter fingers, twizzlers, tortilla chips and salsa, bisquick, donuts, huge steaks, and soft shell crabs... that's what happens to our grocery cart when we show up in the US after a year long absence!
You know what else sprung at me? The lawn campaign signs, the flags everywhere, the large size ribbon bumper stickers (to support the troops, support ovarian cancer, but mostly to proclaim that the driver's son (sometimes daughter) is somewhere far away risking his (her) life), the police sirens, the lazy and incompetent drivers and the bigger people - yup.
But I am also eternally grateful for the multi ethnicity of the population, lest little A was going to be growing up thinking everyone in the whole world was white with only different shades of tanning.
You know what else sprung at me? The lawn campaign signs, the flags everywhere, the large size ribbon bumper stickers (to support the troops, support ovarian cancer, but mostly to proclaim that the driver's son (sometimes daughter) is somewhere far away risking his (her) life), the police sirens, the lazy and incompetent drivers and the bigger people - yup.
But I am also eternally grateful for the multi ethnicity of the population, lest little A was going to be growing up thinking everyone in the whole world was white with only different shades of tanning.
Monday, August 21, 2006
more lil updates
After a whilrwind week with the visit of a great friend (thanks again for coming!), it's time to post a couple of updates.
I am impressed by the little one. In fact, I was telling this friend that I often feel as if I've inherited this great gift (the lil one); but that I'm always wondering if someone else may not show up and claim more custody rights to her than us; as if we didn't deserve her (well, at least on the nights when she sleeps, that's how I feel :) Or maybe it's the sleeplessness that's causing such crazy talk).
In any case, she's on FIRE! She just tried two free dives off of her changing table today. Thankfully we caught her in mid air. Phew. My heart skipped a few beats. We're going to be changing the table setup. Real soon. As in, right now.
She's walking everywhere, with help. I'm ignoring all the well-meaning people who say she shouldn't until she's a year old. They obviously have not met her determination to walk - it's so much simpler to hold her hands and give in to her exploring demands than to try and sit her down. Which will prove fun on the 15 hour travel journey we'll be taking in two days. And with the restricted carry-ons allowed (no toy? no book? no music box?). And she just came down with her first ever illness - well, only a cold and sore throat, but still, congestion for a little one during airplane takeoff and landing? party on!
She's a catholic: up, down, stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, lay down (?? some fanatic catholic sect maybe??).
She's "a-da-da-da-da-da"-ing to P's greatest delight. I'm a teeny bit jealous. But patient.
She's figured out that big people water bottles hold water. If she ever wants water, she just stretches her hands towards one of those and if we hover in the neighborhood, she'll actually pick it up and put her mouth to it. hilarious. thank god she hasn't figured out what's in the limoncello bottle ;0.
And her latest game is with her pacifier (i know, i know, she's not supposed to have one by this age, we're working on it, ok, but she's a teether and a sucking soother, and, well, judge me): she can play with it, but she can't figure out how to put it back in her mouth properly - and she knows that. She was playing in her crib yesterday and I was nearby, so she reached for her pacifier which was laying on the mat next to her, and handed it for me to put into her mouth. cute.
otherwise, the general game these days is "drop". as in, drop anything from the high chair. drop anything from the change table (including self, as mentioned above). but also drop also-above-mentioned pacifier in between crib bars - always on the side of the wall to make more noise and see princess' parents crawl to fetch it. ha ha ha - the fun a lil one can conjure!
Finally here's a very recent pic:
I am impressed by the little one. In fact, I was telling this friend that I often feel as if I've inherited this great gift (the lil one); but that I'm always wondering if someone else may not show up and claim more custody rights to her than us; as if we didn't deserve her (well, at least on the nights when she sleeps, that's how I feel :) Or maybe it's the sleeplessness that's causing such crazy talk).
In any case, she's on FIRE! She just tried two free dives off of her changing table today. Thankfully we caught her in mid air. Phew. My heart skipped a few beats. We're going to be changing the table setup. Real soon. As in, right now.
She's walking everywhere, with help. I'm ignoring all the well-meaning people who say she shouldn't until she's a year old. They obviously have not met her determination to walk - it's so much simpler to hold her hands and give in to her exploring demands than to try and sit her down. Which will prove fun on the 15 hour travel journey we'll be taking in two days. And with the restricted carry-ons allowed (no toy? no book? no music box?). And she just came down with her first ever illness - well, only a cold and sore throat, but still, congestion for a little one during airplane takeoff and landing? party on!
She's a catholic: up, down, stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, lay down (?? some fanatic catholic sect maybe??).
She's "a-da-da-da-da-da"-ing to P's greatest delight. I'm a teeny bit jealous. But patient.
She's figured out that big people water bottles hold water. If she ever wants water, she just stretches her hands towards one of those and if we hover in the neighborhood, she'll actually pick it up and put her mouth to it. hilarious. thank god she hasn't figured out what's in the limoncello bottle ;0.
And her latest game is with her pacifier (i know, i know, she's not supposed to have one by this age, we're working on it, ok, but she's a teether and a sucking soother, and, well, judge me): she can play with it, but she can't figure out how to put it back in her mouth properly - and she knows that. She was playing in her crib yesterday and I was nearby, so she reached for her pacifier which was laying on the mat next to her, and handed it for me to put into her mouth. cute.
otherwise, the general game these days is "drop". as in, drop anything from the high chair. drop anything from the change table (including self, as mentioned above). but also drop also-above-mentioned pacifier in between crib bars - always on the side of the wall to make more noise and see princess' parents crawl to fetch it. ha ha ha - the fun a lil one can conjure!
Finally here's a very recent pic:
Friday, August 11, 2006
revue de presse
"Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land": Noam Chomsky, rabbis, israelis, and media watchgroups debunk the US media's gross misrepresentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Paradise Lost on US Territory : Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists
Academics barred from US for ideology? The 'Espoused Terrorism' visa exclusion
"It is not just the people who are turned down," said obert M. O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. "If there are a number of sensitive and conscientious people who decide it is not worth coming at all and decide to go to another country, then we in the U.S. are the losers."
The Senate continues to pick on climatologists.
Also, hilarious, Will Ferrel's Bush on Global Warming.
Paradise Lost on US Territory : Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists
Academics barred from US for ideology? The 'Espoused Terrorism' visa exclusion
"It is not just the people who are turned down," said obert M. O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. "If there are a number of sensitive and conscientious people who decide it is not worth coming at all and decide to go to another country, then we in the U.S. are the losers."
The Senate continues to pick on climatologists.
Also, hilarious, Will Ferrel's Bush on Global Warming.
males as modified females
An almost non-sexist article from The (infamous) Economis on gender differences, including debunking reported behavioural differences between the sexes:
In the past, it was assumed that a female was simply a male with hormones, says Tracey Shors, a professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University. The truth is the exact opposite. Female is the default brain setting. Until the eighth week of gestation every human fetal brain looks female. The brain, like the rest of the human body, becomes male as a result of surges of testosterone—one during gestation and one shortly after birth.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
broken teddy
Picture this mommy moment: I am sitting down during the lil one's afternoon nap to saw up the iconic teddy.
Now awake from the reverie: Teddy (who is the little one of a pair; the big one is Ted of course) was not worn down by overuse ; he had been torn to pieces by a mouse.
A mouse? A rat maybe, in fact, given the size of the thing. But in this household we choose to refer to it as Henrietta the mouse - that lets me sleep better at night. Henrietta sure partied it up while we were away: in less than a week she stashed a nice little pile of 4 dozen walnuts, 3 dozen rigatoni pasta tubes, a few swedish bread rolls, 2 sponges; she chewed on our wooden dish rack, ate a few limbs of stuffed animals, crawled all over the place and uh marked her territory every where. Yuck. Arg. Icky. Was I ever so unpleased to be coming home. The worst offense? She grabbed the afore-mentioned teddy off of the little one's crib (I still don't let myself dwell on this image - too scary) and dragged it for a meal underneath our bed. I am not too weak of heart, but I didn't sleep well until Henrietta the mega-mouse was taken care of.
Henrietta was American. Or British. Clearly. She chose the peanut butter trap over the French cheese trap.
Now in addition to the glaring nightlight, we sleep with a electric mechanism that supposedly keeps rodents away and sounds maddeningly like a leaking faucet.
The things we adjust too...
Now awake from the reverie: Teddy (who is the little one of a pair; the big one is Ted of course) was not worn down by overuse ; he had been torn to pieces by a mouse.
A mouse? A rat maybe, in fact, given the size of the thing. But in this household we choose to refer to it as Henrietta the mouse - that lets me sleep better at night. Henrietta sure partied it up while we were away: in less than a week she stashed a nice little pile of 4 dozen walnuts, 3 dozen rigatoni pasta tubes, a few swedish bread rolls, 2 sponges; she chewed on our wooden dish rack, ate a few limbs of stuffed animals, crawled all over the place and uh marked her territory every where. Yuck. Arg. Icky. Was I ever so unpleased to be coming home. The worst offense? She grabbed the afore-mentioned teddy off of the little one's crib (I still don't let myself dwell on this image - too scary) and dragged it for a meal underneath our bed. I am not too weak of heart, but I didn't sleep well until Henrietta the mega-mouse was taken care of.
Henrietta was American. Or British. Clearly. She chose the peanut butter trap over the French cheese trap.
Now in addition to the glaring nightlight, we sleep with a electric mechanism that supposedly keeps rodents away and sounds maddeningly like a leaking faucet.
The things we adjust too...
Monday, August 07, 2006
jerk
- "Sidewalk!"
- "Jerk!"
- "What did you say??" . The beamer stops and the grayback reverses to halt next to me, the stroller, and the lil one in there, dozing off.
I reply that he shouldn't be screaming out his window as he passes me, and that I need to go left - whereas the sidewalk was going right only and therefore clearly unhelpful.
Yes, he and his wifey retort, but I have a baby.
Well, I am well aware of that, and if they really want to help, why don't they step out of their tank and give me a hand to carry the stroller down the 15 steps that force me to make an unsafe detour.
They don't step out of their car, which by the way, means they're polluting in the lil one's vulnerable lungs whereas me, environmental conscious that I am, am sweating the 30 minute walk in the blistering heat to preserve a bit of this planet.
- "Well, at least you should be polite!" and they're off.
Excuse me???
I'm having difficulties with the local 3Rs: rich, retired, self-righteous.
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