Just Powers

Emma turned 17 months old today.

Her separation anxiety continued this month, with the most difficulty being Monday mornings at day care. Leaving her wailing in the arms of Miss Kathy made me want to quit my job at least four times this month. Somehow the knowledge that she is developing appropriately is no consolation on those mornings.

Sleep became a challenge for her this month (and last month too really) in a way it has never been before. And by *challenge* I mean *nightmare*. Our once rock-star-sleeper now cries every night before finally falling asleep. We don’t let her go too long before going back in and rubbing her back, and she eventually falls asleep, but it is so hard to watch her having such difficulty with something she used to do with such ease.

Besides the challenges, this month had its share of fun and adventures for her too.

Emma’s Grammy and Grampy from Massachusetts visited for a long weekend this month. She blew bubbles with them, and took them to Ikea and Mayorga Coffee and Red Dog Cafe and just generally hung out and had a good time. She can’t wait to spend a whole week with them at the beach this summer.

Emma also traveled to New Jersey this month to see her Poppy and Nonnie, Aunt Lexi, Great Gram, Aunt Sally and Uncle Bill and Uncle Tim and Aunt Elvie. She loved meeting Aunt Lexi’s new *baby*, Mowgli - a French Bulldog - and spending time with everyone. I think the highlight of the trip though was the grandfather clock that chimed every hour, causing Emma to run to the living room to watch it.

We have had hundreds of gypsy moths in our yard this month, and Emma can’t get enough. She runs to the back door every morning looking for them and whenever we go outside she finds them and waves at them as though they are BFF.

She also became obsessed with The Wheels on the Bus this month. She moves her hands in circles and looks at us with her eyebrows arched, waiting for us to start singing. She loves when the doors go open and shut and likes to jerk her hand behind her when the driver says “Move on back”. Cutest thing ever.

She is still playing with sound combinations, and although we recognize words occasionally there is nothing that she says with regularity. She continues to pick up sign language though - please and thank you! - and this month signed “more milk”, her first phrase.

We continue to be amazed at her bravery and determination and how much she understands about her world. We love her with all our hearts.

Emma turned 16 months old today. It was a tough, but exciting month for her.

She spent the first half of the month feeling pretty sick from the vaccines she got at her 15 month visit - I suspect it was the MMR that did her in. She spiked a fever of 103.4, had what I guess is the classic rash associated with measles (or is it mumps?), and was really really miserable for two full weeks. Around the same time, Mike was out of town and she seemed to really miss him, which only exacerbated how bad she was feeling.

Once Daddy returned and she started feeling better, the slide incident showed us that Emma is pretty much fearless, even if the same can’t be said of her parents. She continues to go down the slide on her belly, face first, any chance she gets, as this video documents.

The climbing she was just beginning to enjoy last month has become an obsession. She climbs up on the dining room chairs at every opportunity and once even pulled one down on top of herself. Luckily we were right there to rescue her and she didn’t get hurt. The incident did prompt a “no climbing” rule for the dining room chairs however. It’s a battle we are not likely to win, but we keep trying.

She also decided this month that going down the stairs backwards on her belly is for losers, pah! She now walks up and down the stairs holding on to the railing, if there is one. If a railing isn’t there, then Mommy or Daddy better be, cause she is going anyway. When we leave the house in a hurry and I have to carry her down the stairs to get her in the car, she screams in protest. As soon as we arrive home and I take her out of the car seat, she wriggles out of my arms so she can walk up to the front door.

As if sliding and climbing and stair-walking weren’t enough, just in the last week she has started *jumping*. She bends her knees and then jumps up by straightening her legs without her feet leaving the ground. She thinks it is hysterical. Imagine what she will do when she can actually get some air.

Even though she is fearless on the slide and the dining room chairs, Emma started showing some pretty classic signs of separation anxiety this month, which certainly wasn’t helped by how sick she felt during the first half of the month. She was tearful and clingy much more than usual and it tugged on my heart something fierce. I used to be able to leave her at day care and she would happily run off to play with the other kids without so much as a “see ya mom”. Now I can’t get out of there without lots of tears and a pouty lower lip and the arms reaching for me in desperation. This of course causes me to have my own tears and pouty lower lip all the way to work.

I know it’s just a stage, and a developmentally appropriate one at that, but it is a tough one. She wants me to hold her all the time and has lost any ability to entertain herself, even though she used to be great at it. One day I know she will grow out of this though and I will pine for the moment in time when she wouldn’t even let me put her down so I could go to the bathroom. I will grab her and sneak in a hug and a kiss in the nanoseconds it takes her to peel herself away from me to go play with her friends. So I am trying just to cherish the closeness that comes with her new neediness and not feel smothered by it.

She is still mostly just chattering, not a lot of intelligible words yet, although every once in a while we hear something that is unmistakable. Last week, she said…wait for it…”lasagna”. Yep. Lasagna. She also says “EJ”, a friend she plays with about once a week, although it sounds more like “Eej”.

Her sign language on the other hand is going great - she seems to pick up a sign after only seeing it a couple of times, something that has amazed me on more than one occasion. In addition to “more”, “finished” and “milk” which she has been signing for a while, she now signs “again” (to be fair, a sign that is pretty close to more, but she uses it in context which blows us away), “apple”, “bird”, “thank you”, “eat”, “raisin” (my favorite) and we are working on “please”.

This month she shared Easter with her Aunt Jocelyn (who doubled as the Easter Bunny with her rockin’ Easter baskets - yes plural), went to the Kite Festival at the Washington Monument with us and visited the cherry blossoms in full bloom with EJ and Bridget. She did some gardening with Mommy and was fascinated by all the flowers showing up the yard - especially the hyacinths and daffodils in the front.

She continues to eat almost anything, and this month discovered she loves berries of any kind. She also enjoyed fajitas for the first time, and wolfed down the aforementioned lasagna. Oh! And finally this month, she got really good at drinking from a cup. At the beginning of the month she could do it without my help, as long as I was there, hovering, to make sure the cup didn’t end up in her lap. Now she is so good at it that I can give her the cup and leave the room, feeling pretty confident that she won’t spill. Of course, now we are working on getting her not to tip the cup over when she has finished drinking, which is a favorite game…

The separation anxiety notwithstanding, she is quickly turning into a little girl which is so fun to watch, even if it makes us feel sad at how fast it is happening.

Emma turned 15 months old yesterday. At her 15 month check up (which was also yesterday) she weighed in at 21 pounds 12 ounces and was 31 1/2 inches long. It didn’t seem like enough growth to me, but the doctor assured me that if she kept growing on her previous trajectory, she would be 700 pounds by the time she is 10, and that she is fine. I said ok.

In the last month she went to the National Building Museum with her friend B., had a visit from her Aunt Lexi and went to the Museum of Natural History with her, had a few play dates with E., went to Tryst for brunch with her Aunt Jocelyn, hung out with frogs at the National Geographic Museum (quite the month for museums I guess!) and watched her parents lose their MINDS over the 2008 Democratic Primary.

She loves going to day care, and they seem pretty fond of her as well. We haven’t take the plunge and added a day yet, but we are still strongly considering it.

The two biggest changes in the last month have been in her climbing and her speech.

She has decided that the most fun she can possibly have is to climb up into the armchairs in our sun room. She runs over to them giggling, and scrabbles on the seat to hoist one leg up and then the other. Every so often she looks behind her to see if we are watching and when she sees that we are, she gets a sly little smile on her face - as though she is doing something forbidden, even though we have never told her not to climb the chairs. When she finally gets herself onto the chair she stands up and grabs the back of it and laughs as if we are chasing her, which we aren’t of course.

We are actively discouraging the standing up part, since she could fall backwards. Also, at 21ish pounds she is not going to cause too much wear and tear on the seats but as she gets bigger we don’t really want her thinking standing on chairs is cool, or we will be buying new furniture every year. The other day I found her sitting in the chair reading. Really one of the sweetest things ever.

The other thing that has shifted this month is her speech. As I said last month, I have had just the very teeniest tiniest slightest amount of concern over the fact that she doesn’t say anything besides “Mama” and “Dada”, but I have been able to keep it pretty much under control. In the last month, really the last couple of weeks, although there are no new words, she has gone from what I would call “babbling”, to “chattering”. She holds entire conversations with us, or by herself - whatev - and has an amazing amount of variance in her expressions, both vocal and facial. Almost to the point that I feel a little stupid for NOT understanding her, because she is so clearly saying SOMETHING.

She also seems to be trying different combinations of vowels and consonants a lot to see how they sound together and also to see whether her parents jump up and down like morons when she hits certain combinations. She says “ess” a lot - could be “yes”, could be “moose”, could be “s” (but why really?) Just yesterday she started making an “O” with her mouth while stretching her nose out (kind of the opposite of scrunching her nose up, which she also does), but no word followed. Just the “O”. I know what you are thinking, but no, it isn’t her attempt at “Obama”, for that she seems to be working on rearranging all the syllables - “ma-o-ma” or something like that - again, nothing so clear that we can say “YES!!! OBAMA!!!!”

So there are all sorts of funny experiments going on with her face and mouth but no clear words, not English ones anyway. I really think that she is just the type that likes to get something right before she does it for real, and that all this practice with her language is going to come to fruition one day when we walk in the room and she lets us know the solution to the whole Florida-Michigan delegate debacle. Either that or she is going to shout “Moose, shut the f*@% up!”. Good times.

She learned the sign for “milk” this month and thankfully the loudness I complained of last month has morphed into her chatter which is so much more fun and pleasant to be around. Her new favorite book is “Hop on Pop” and now in addition to loving the Obama pins littering decorating the house, when we ask her “where’s Obama?” she looks down at her shirt to see if the button is there. She also beams with joy when we show her Senator Obama’s speeches or the will.i.am videos. Such a smart girl.

Obviously life with Emma just gets more and more fun and more and more joyous every day. How did we get so lucky?

Update: How could I forget? Emma also got two new teeth this month, her bottom molars, the very front ones. Are those even called molars? Dunno. Anyway, she has ‘em.

It’s hard work being a kid. It’s hard work being a mom too, but really, I think it is still harder being a kid. I watch Emma every day, learning how her body works, learning that everything around her has a name, learning the difference between playing gently with the dogs and playing hard with her toys and learning that the world has rules, even though she may not always like it. I watch her soak up new information and process new experiences every day and I am amazed at how much work it obviously is, that she is able to learn so much so fast and that she is ready to start fresh every morning.

Emma turned 14 months old yesterday. When she hit about nine months old, I felt like something shifted in life with her. She became more aware and more excited about what was happening in the world around her and it felt like we entered a new phase. This past month has felt very similar. Mike and I have had more of those “Whoa, did that just happen?” moments in the last month than I can remember ever having.

Last month, Emma started dancing by bouncing her knees when music started. This month she took her dancing to a whole new level and now has a routine that I am pretty sure is worthy of the next season of “So You Think You Can Dance”. She twists and turns and even, dare I say it, gyrates a little, even getting her arms into the act as she waves them overhead. I have hours and hours of video of her walking around the house with music in the background. I keep shooting in the hopes that she will start dancing so I can share it with you. So far I have only gotten snippets, since as soon as she sees me videotaping her, she stops and comes over to see what is going on. I will keep trying though.

The thing that has amazed us the most in the last thirty days though is Emma’s new ability to understand and process language. I wrote in her 13 month update that she was starting to follow simple directions. Now she can follow two part directions - “Emma get the bear and take it to daddy” and when we ask her questions she understands what we mean and lets us know her answer. When we ask her “Emma do you want to go to bed?” she nods and walks to her room, turning around to make sure we are following. It is mind blowing.

She has also started being really LOUD lately. She screams and shouts and yells “EH EH EH”, and not always out of frustration or anger. My theory is that she is testing the range of her voice and when she does seem frustrated it is because she can’t communicate what she wants. Or she’s just plain loud, which is always a possibility. Whatever the reason, it makes me crazy and leaves me wishing for her tiny little newborn cry.

She still isn’t talking, which as a new parent of course I sometimes wonder about, but she understands language so clearly that I am not too concerned. The doctor assured me at her one year check up that some kids don’t talk until 15 months, and I didn’t say my first word until 18 months, so I haven’t started googling “delayed speech” just yet.

Her signing is going really well, even if her talking isn’t. She can tell us when she is “finished”, when she wants to “drink” and when she wants “more”. That last one is key - it’s how we get her to stop yelling about wanting more food and just tell us. She has sort of created her own version of the sign for “more”, but she knows what she means and we know what she means so we don’t correct her. She appears really delighted each time she signs it and she actually GETS more - as if she can’t believe how easy it is to make us do what she wants, and let’s face it, it is.

She brought home her first piece of art work from daycare this month, which proudly went up on our fridge. She also had her first visit from her Uncle Andy and Aunt Alyson this month, and went with them to the National Museum of the American Indian - her first of many trips there I am sure.

Her favorite books are “Goodnight Gorilla” and “Bear Snores On”, some her favorite foods are feta cheese, bananas, eggs and yogurt and her favorite new game is Torture the Cat, which we are working on discouraging. She loves the Obama pin I wear on my coat and has one of her own that she carries around with her - we are still hoping Obama will be her first word. She is funny and smart and snuggly, and truly everything I could ever hope for in a child.

Except for that yelling thing. Really hoping that is just a stage.

I wrote a few days ago about how excited we are in our house at the outcome of the Iowa caucus. What I didn’t write about is all the other things that have happened around here in the last week.

On Sunday Mike and I won our Fantasy Football league championship - for the second year in a row. Sweeet! Seeing as it is also only our second year playing fantasy football, we were pretty psyched. Of course now no one in our league is speaking to us, so maybe we would have been better off throwing the game.

On Monday we bought a new car. We got the Mazda5 in Redskin Red (ok, the dealership calls it “copper red”. Whatever.) and we are in love with it. It is zippy and has zoom zoom and doesn’t make me feel like a soccer mom. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it’s just not where I am at this point in my life - give me a few years though. You had to be a contortionist to get Emma into her car seat with our old car. Now I don’t even have to bend over. W00t!

On Thursday…well, everyone knows what happened on Thursday.

On Saturday Emma turned 13 months old.

She had her first day of daycare this week. It was a half-day really, so we could ease her into it. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t to ease her into it, it was to ease me into it. She didn’t even cry when I left. By contrast, I was a mess. They do art projects and go on fieldtrips and play outside at the daycare, which will be really good for her since I seriously think she may be bored with me at home. Of course now I am going to have step up my game on the days she is with me or she is going to start asking to go to daycare every day.

Emma had her first real playdate this week too. It was with a little boy who is almost exactly her age. We went to his house and she was a little more restrained than I expected. To be fair, E. was flinging balls at her head a lot of the time, so maybe she was just figuring out how to get home alive. Neither of them have gotten to the “sharing” stage quite yet, so there was a lot of parental intervention required. We had a good time though and E. and his mom will probably be coming here in a week or two.

Emma started twirling this week. She looked up at me one morning and then started spinning around in a circle until she got dizzy and fell over. She laughed the whole time. I have no idea where she learned it (daycare?) but now when I say “Emma, twirl!” she spins and spins. It is a riot.

She continues to love music and uses her knees to bounce up and down and dance. She is a great eater and so far has not shown an aversion to particular foods that I have read so many toddlers develop. Speaking of toddlers, she has had a couple of full blown lie-on-the-floor-and-kick-your-feet type tantrums which were amazing to behold. The tantrums were short lived and luckily we were at home, but we are really hoping they aren’t signs of the “terrible twos” coming a little early.

Her only word is still “Da” for her daddy, but (terrifyingly) she seems to understand a lot of what we say. She follows simple directions like “go get your Bear” or “sit down in the bathtub”. Oddly, it seems for some reason that when we say “don’t touch the dog food” she hears “please pick up that very full bowl of dog food and dump it all over the kitchen floor”. I guess we should have her ears looked at…

I continue to be amazed at how much FUN it is to have a little person to hang out with. It’s the part of parenting that not a whole lot of people really talk about. Mike and I could sit and watch her play and dance and laugh for hours and hours, and once she starts talking? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Emma’s First Birthday from Justpowers on Vimeo.

Emma is one today.

I remember every minute of this day one year ago. I especially remember being utterly amazed at how beautiful she was, the second she was born. I had prepared pretty well for the labor and delivery and even for bringing her home and making sure she was taken care of in a material sense. There was no way for me to prepare for the emotional impact she would have on me, or for how immediate that impact would be. She was beautiful and so real and even though she was just over five pounds, she already held a place in my heart and my life that was bigger than most of the grownups living there.

She still surprises me with her beauty. She dances to music, talks to the cats, and delights in every new experience. She is already smarter than me, but forgives me for it, and loves James Taylor, which, let’s face it, is all you have to do to win me over.

Today was a mixed bag of emotions for me. I cried a few times, thinking about the power of her birth, how fast the year has gone and how fast the rest of them will go. Mostly I was happy though, playing with her in the first snow of the season - which arrived as her birthday present from Mother Nature - watching her flirt with all the nice people at the grocery store who couldn’t help but talk to her, and helping her learn how to play with her cool new birthday presents.

This post is a little disjointed I guess, but it feels like there are no words really to express what I feel about my daughter. Most of you feel it already anyway - either for Emma or for your own child/ren - so I know I don’t really need to explain too much. I feel like the Grinch at the end of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” when his heart grew three sizes. Before I had Emma, I thought my heart was pretty much finished growing. Now that she is here, it grows a little more each day.

Emma turned 11 months old on Monday.

She is walking by herself. She looks like a drunken sailor, but she is doing it. Most of the time she walks by herself only when we stand her up and make her, but lately I have found her getting into a standing position by herself and walking just for the sheer joy of it. She also dances when we turn music on, although her gyrations usually knock her to the ground.

She has four teeth now - two bottom front and two top front - and they have not been kind to her. With each one she suffers through a lot of pain (it seems to me) tons of drool and a few sleepless nights.

The only baby food she eats anymore is the baby oatmeal she gets in the morning - but as soon as that box is finished we are going to move to the grown-up oatmeal. She loves cheerios and tofu and peas and squash, but her favorite thing is little baby goldfish. Oh and dog food, but we try to limit how much of that she gets.

She is so curious about everything around her and has started looking at people expectantly, waiting for them to make a face or smile at her. Because she is now mobile she has discovered that she can follow the cats wherever they go - including under the dining room table. To their credit, they are pretty patient with her and seem to enjoy the game as much as she does.

I feel like she grows and changes every day. I guess I have always felt that way about her, but there has been something about her development since about 9 months that has felt like someone hit the fast forward button. She is such a different person than she was at 6 months, and in some ways is so much the same.

As we approach her one year birthday I am blown away at how quickly it has gone. I look at the pictures of her as a newborn and little baby and realize I had no idea at the time how much fun she would be just a few months down the road. Thinking about how fast life has moved in the last year makes me realize that I don’t really want to waste time stressing about whether I am parenting “right”. I just want to enjoy every moment with her.

Emma is ten months old today.

She has decided that baby food is so last month. All people food for her now, thanks. Sweet potatoes and peas are her favorite. Also, afternoon naps? Not so much.

This month was pretty low key, not counting the two new teeth, meeting Barack Obama and the walking thing.

She is still into exploring and loves to go to the park to swing and watch the other kids play. She is also a huge flirt with pretty much anyone who will smile at her, and as soon as a camera is turned on her she turns into a huge ham.

There are days when I hold her and can’t believe how big she is and how big she is still to become. I watch her sleep and I see her dad in her. How amazing to watch this life grow.

Emma turned 9 months old today. 9 months. I don’t even know what to say.

Ok, well let me get an update in here before she turns 37.

She saw Dr. Ben this morning and weighed in at 18 lbs. 3.2 oz. and 27 1/4 inches. He said we should start giving her “table food”. (I didn’t want to sound too much like a wise ass so I didn’t ask what that meant exactly. Isn’t anything that can go on the table “table” food? But I digress.) I shared with the good doctor that I was pretty sure that it would be much safer to wait until she was say, 12 or 13 before introducing foods she might choke on, but he was not to be reasoned with.

So I guess we are going to start giving her finger food she can pick up and eat herself (and get lodged in her TINY LITTLE throat). Thanks doc.

9 months.

She is crawling as fast as Moose can walk. In fact, I often find them drag racing down the hallway. Emma usually wins, but I am pretty sure that is because Moose is throwing the race. While she loves to crawl and explore, there is nothing she loves more than standing and walking. She still needs to hold onto something when she walks, but she can stand for a good 10 seconds by herself before she delicately plops down on her derrière. We find her standing in her crib after every nap and beaming with joy when we open the door.

She has started saying “mamamamamma” and “dadadadada” (in that order), and we know she knows what she is saying, despite what the books say. We are less sure what “aaaaannnnnnnnaaaahhhlllld” means, but we’ll get it eventually. She just started waving at us recently, both hello and goodbye, although it’s not a trick she will do on command, so don’t bother asking her.

Every day with Emma is a joy. She is the light of our life. I can’t wait to see what the next 274 days will bring.

Emma turned 8 months old yesterday. She has had a busy month. She is now sleeping through the night consistently, sitting up with no wobbling, standing pretty solidly as long as she is holding onto something, and CRAWLING! She is kind of doing the army style crawl right now - using her arms to pull herself along on her belly, but I expect she will be cruising with the dogs and cats within the week.

She had a lot of firsts this month too. First time at the beach, first time sitting in a shopping cart, first time flying a kite (ok, she didn’t so much fly it as provide moral support), and on and on and on…She meets each new experience very seriously and with a lot of concentration and determination.

As you can see in this picture though, she knows how to have a good time too. While the dogs fascinated her a month or two ago, now it’s the cats that she can’t stop watching. We are working on teaching her a few signs, and so far “cat” seems to be the one she has figured out. If we do the sign for cat and a cat is in the room, she immediately looks over at said animal. Brilliant.