Parlor Tricks

Did I mention that I sing everything to Zoe? I may have posted that in a previous blog, but I’ll post it again in case you forgot, although I guess I’m the one that forgot, or didn’t forget if I actually didn’t post it. Anyway, I sing everything. “‘Zo-es take-ing off her so-ocks’, ‘Dadd-y’s putt-ing on his sho-oes’, ‘Zo-e wants some Chee-ri-o’s’.” It doesn’t have to rhyme, and it usually doesn’t even have a (pleasant) melody. All that’s needed is to string together whatever sentence you would normally speak (normally speak to a one year old). In some cases Zoe expects it. When I warm up a bottle for her I have to sing, “When the light goes out, the milk is ready,” song, which is that same line just repeated at different octaves until the light goes out, sometime accompanied by a small jig around the kitchen. We also have the kitty cat song. Whenever one of the cats walk by we sing, “Harry the kitty-cat. Fuz-zy kitty-cat,” or “Tucker the kitty-cat. Half of, him is black.” Ultimately I think this type of communicating with one’s child is what makes parents so irritating to non-parents.

After Zoe sneezes I always exclaim (exuberantly) gesundheit. She will than mock sneeze so that I say it again. She’s been trying to copy us a lot more recently. When we brush our hands together to clean them she will do the same, and she knows it’s a different motion than clapping, which she loves to do. I recently rubbed my fingers and thumb together to clean them of some san and she wiggled her fingers in the air while looking at me quizzically. Seeing as how Zoe hates having her hands cleaned she would certainly not be copying this action if she knew the purpose. I have been trying to make animal sounds. She can’t make the sounds but when I do an elephant she will lift one arm up, as I do, for the trunk. When I do a monkey—hands in armpits—she will do a little wiggle that would otherwise be interpreted as a shiver if one didn’t know better. And best of all Zoe has mastered walking behind her ride/push toy. We’ve been trying to get her to do this for a while, but it took us going out for the afternoon and having a babysitter. We came home to an almost-walking child. They also had her napping in her own crib, something else we’ve never been able to do. We’re going to have them come over next week to teach her French. All these new tricks mean that Zoe has advanced beyond the cats for entertaining guests. No longer do we have to pull out the laser light to make the cat run in circles when conversation begins to lag.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Dad’s Heart Skips a Beat, Take 1

I sometimes wonder if I should encourage Zoe toward certain accomplishments. For example, ascending and descending stairs. I understand that it is important that she learn to do this, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if she were, say, four feet tall and a decade older. The problem with stairs is that they are steep and in our house hard. But regardless of what I want she is taking it upon herself to conquer them. A few days ago I put her down on the sidewalk in front of the house while I unloaded the car. When I turned around he had climbed up the first two steps to the first landing. Unfortunately the first landing has a water problem and there is a muddy puddle, which, I believe, was her primary goal. Other than the fact that my heart skipped a beat when I turned around and she was not right where I put her, those two steps were somewhat benign. Less so was the other day when I forgot to close the gate at the top of the stairs. I was in the kitchen, I heard her coming across the living room and expected her to join me. After a couple of moments of silence I suddenly remembered that the gate was open and dashed (sprinted, ran, leaped) from the kitchen and found her two steps down, sitting with her legs hanging over the step. If you cut me in half and count the rings you will discover that I aged five years at that moment. After I wrote this paragraph Zoe climbed down the nine steps from our living room to the front door. It was not caught on film because I was inches away from her, ready to catch a stumble.

The other morning Alison’s alarm went off at around 6:30 as usual. But wait, where’s Zoe? Usually she wakes up before the alarm and is already in bed with us (playing, not sleeping). So Alison climbs out of bed and asks me if I think she is okay. Why would she not be okay? She’s just sleeping a little bit later. “Of course she’s okay,” I respond. (Actually I just said, “Yes,” and tried to pretend I was still asleep.) So Alison goes off to shower and I start to wonder. Is she okay? It’s 6:30 and she’s not in bed with us. We did put her to bed with a blanket. Could she have gotten tangled up in it? What about the monkey toy? It has no small parts and isn’t big enough to smother a mouse, but could she have lodged a monkey foot into her mouth? So what do I do? I get out of bed and with as much stealth as possible I ease her door open. She immediately sits up in her crib and I carry her back into our bed, safe and sound. The next morning she is up at five. I guess she didn’t want us to worry.

A milestone was reached this week: Zoe graduated to a forward facing car seat.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

So Many Changes

It’s 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning. It was my turn to get out of bed early this weekend morning to bring Zoe upstairs to play (which means she is hanging off my chair trying to reach the keyboard as I type). Although usually it’s near impossible to do anything while Zoe is awake, yesterday I caught her playing quietly by herself on her play mat and discovered that she is playing with her toys on a whole new level. Not only is she placing the rings of the stacking toy on the post, but she is also slipping her arm in and out through the hole of the larger ring. She has also been spotted nesting the nesting blocks, and finding small objects to place inside the larger ones. She has a toy that requires that you hit a hard plastic ball with a hard plastic hammer to get the balls to travel through a short maze. The balls balance on their own little base, and she will remove and than put the ball back onto it’s small spot, a task that requires a bit of coordination. As for the hammer, she still doesn’t have the strength and coordination to knock the balls through, so she instead pounds everything else with it, most often the hardwood floor. She has also enthusiastically learned how to wave goodbye. About five minutes before Alison leaves for work in the morning she will start the arm waving, and it will continue until Alison actually leaves. In fact, all it takes is one of us walking away from her, even to go sit on a chair, for her to start in on the bye-byes. She prefers to wave goodbye to people she knows, but will also wave goodbye to anybody else, as long as they are not looking.

It’s been about a month since I wrote Into the Crib, Part 2. The early days were tough on us (and probably on Zoe as well). She would cry and it would nearly break your heart (and require that we turn the TV volume up way too loud). That first week we would go get her if she cried for more than a couple of minutes. Well, we are a month down the road and for a while she was actually sleeping through the night. However, she has recently started waking up somewhere around blurry-numbers-on-the-clock o’clock. She will join us in bed, Alison will feed her, then she will find it impossible to get comfortable and wiggle and kick until I pull myself from the warm blankets to carry her back into her own room, where she will proceed to cry because we have abandoned her. She will eventually go back to sleep (after we have lain awake wondering if she will really go back to sleep), but until she actually sleeps from the time we put her to bed until a reasonable hour in the morning we can not claim complete into the crib success. The saga continues.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass
Now a full year of blogs and hundreds of cute Zoe photos can be purchased in a book. Wow! Just follow this link. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/193034

Zoe Turns One Year Old

On Friday Zoe turned one year old. Parents of older children told us that the first year would go by very quickly (and that we should take a lot of photos). It has (and I have). I spend a lot of time with Zoe, and I write this blog, but sometimes it’s hard to remember everything Zoe has done and everything we’ve been through. We had friends with their six-week old baby over for dinner recently. We generously imparted some sage advice, but it is hard to believe that Zoe was once that small and so far from doing many of the things she is able to do now, like sitting, standing up, grabbing everything that is within her reach—and wanting everything that isn’t. I once mentioned on these pages that we are always looking forward to the next stage in her development. That’s still true, but what I didn’t realize back then was that our recollection of many of those moments would then ebb into the fog of our sleep-deprived memory.

Zoe is changing almost daily. At the park recently I discovered that I didn’t need to support her when she went down the slide. I have caught her on a number of occasions leaning over a book and turning the pages. It’s true that sometimes the book is upside down, but nevertheless, she is looking at the book, not eating it. Lately she has taken a particular interest in peek-a-boo books, those with the inner flap one has to lift to revel the hidden object (then exclaim peek-a-boo). She knows to lift the flap only after I have turned the page, even if I have to read the lead-up text at double speed, before she has a chance to flip. Any day now she will be walking and we’ve been talking with friends about pre-schools.

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. She turned one year old but she is not yet walking, nor is she talking (although she might have said DaDa) and school is still a way off. I really don’t want to rush her, even if it means I can get back to my tennis and golf and lazing the day away at the local coffee shop (and volunteering at the local orphanage). And although parents tell us that age one is the best age, they also said that about three months, and six months, and they’ll say it at eighteen months and probably one or two parents may even say it about being two years old. And I think I’ll agree with them all. Every age is the best age and every day is the best day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass (Birthday Party photos coming later today)

Random Observations

Although Zoe usually wants me to participate in her play time, even if it just means lying on her mat while she plays around me, sometimes she will get into her own world and forget that I am around. Usually this happens when she has found or reached something she shouldn’t have and is focused on pressing buttons or tearing pages or just turning whatever it is around in her hands. I will come up behind her and in a normal voice ask her what she has. Almost every time I will startle her enough that she will drop the object and stare and me with a guilty look. She definitely knows the difference between right and wrong, but her usual reaction when I say no is to give me the cutest smile she has and then go back to whatever it was she was doing, such as turning the cat food bowl upside down. Her other response, more so if she is the slightest bit tired, is after being told no she will give a frustrated cry and press her forehead to the floor, what Alison likes to call a tantrum in its infancy (no pun intended).

I interrupt this weeks post with this important update. Zoe was able to hoist herself to a standing position without pulling herself up on another object. She placed her hands flat on the floor, and lifted herself with her knees to a balanced, standing position. Wow! Catch the exciting video below. Now, back to our blog already in progress.

I’ve only put locks on two cabinets in the kitchen. I suspect I’ll have to add more very soon, but one of her favorite drawers is the one that contains all of her stuff, such as bottles, the nipples (there are a lot), her yet-to-be-used cutlery, a handful of pacifiers that we tried before settling on the one she really likes, and a ton of other miscellaneous stuff. She will absolutely dismantle this drawer, so that the entire kitchen floor is littered with this stuff. She is very methodical; it’s not just about tossing things out. Every nipple and pacifier she will stick it in her mouth for a second or two before tossing it over her shoulder and reaching for the next one. And each bottle she will put up to her mouth and stick her tongue in. She will look each object over before tossing it aside. It’s a pain to clean up but she has too much fun to even consider a lock. Plus it keeps her occupied while I’m cooking.

The other afternoon Zoe and I were having lunch outside on a popular shopping street in Berkeley. Zoe was perched on my knee eating turkey out of my sandwich. In the process of getting lunch and settling ourselves at a table, we had the usual assortment of people approach us to declare Zoe the cutest baby in the world. “What beautiful eyes! Adorable smile! So intense, so smart! What a handsome father, she has!” I never get tired of these compliments, and when someone fails to acknowledge her overwhelming cuteness I feel slightly offended. So, we’re eating our lunch and this guy sits down near us with a beagle. Two individuals approached him to comment on his cute dog, but failed to stop at our table to coo over Zoe. What! Did Alison and I make a mistake when we choose a baby over a dog? Let’s see, dogs usually sleep through the night, right? And you can push a dog off your bed if you want more room. Maybe I should put an ad on Craigslist, “Will trade cute baby for puppy!” I’ll ask Alison what she thinks when she gets home.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Stuff

Occasionally I get ahead of myself and manage to write this blog early. I compile a few thoughts, get them down on paper (or however my neurooscillation’s are displayed), and come Sunday, my post-day, I barely have to pause from my Baywatch reruns. What then usually happens is Zoe does something that requires mentioning here on these pages. I tack it to the top of the post and suddenly that week’s entry is way too long. Of course that’s because I can’t just say, ‘Zoe did so-and-so,’ I have to babble on a bit. Anyway, to your right you will see the very first photo of Zoe standing. I’ve been talking about her standing for a couple of weeks, but this is memorable because she stayed upright long enough for me to take a photo. (click on the photo to super-size it.) I’m not sure why, but we’ve been encouraging her to stand on her own. She has become addicted to our cheers and applause, so she is standing more and more, or basically whenever she needs an attention fix. Now, back to my regularly scheduled blog.

Zoe has a hundred toys in our living room, but if I am not right there with her she is off exploring the rest of the room. I think I may have mentioned a wicker box that sits on the floor at one end of the couch. It holds all our take-out menus, cables for connecting the various electronics to the computers, pens, pads of paper, etc. One afternoon I organized the box and hid it behind the couch, where Zoe rarely goes (unless I happen to be sitting back there). Within five minutes of me hiding the box (I swear she wasn’t looking) she had found it and had once again pulled everything out. It’s too bad we don’t celebrate Easter. She’d clean house at egg hunt time.

Speaking of putting things away, one of the tasks I like to do at the end of the day, after Zoe is asleep and I am about to shut off the lights and head off to bed myself (around 9:30ish) is to organize Zoe’s play area. Zoe will, over the course of the day, play with most of her toys. She will take every toy out of the box, every ring off its stand, every block must be separated, and every book opened. The spread of her toys around the room—the damage radius—must be organized daily, else it is likely to spread and, if not contained, take over the entire house. I like organizing her things mostly because I like to see her dismantle it all again the next day. She is very focused and methodical in her deconstruction. Sometimes he is so focused that she will not notice that I have put a teacup or magazine on the coffee table (which instantly requires that she scurry over and try to grab them before I notice). Sometimes she will come across a toy she has not seen for a while and sit there playing with it long enough for me to write a paragraph of this blog. I suspect that there will come a time where I will grumble about picking up her mess, but for now I’m happy to help her in her daily ritual of destruction.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

The Food Issue

Zoe is beginning to eat like an adult. No, I don’t mean she tucks a napkin onto her lap and politely places one bite-size morsel into her mouth at a time. No, I mean she is eating the same quantity as an adult. For a typical dinner these days she is likely to eat an entire hotdog (natural turkey dog with no by-products, thank you) and half of an avocado, sometimes with a few pieces of pasta thrown into the mix. She can easily eat six golf ball sized oranges, and usually will eat them as fast as I can peel them. And unlike most of her foods she doesn’t even waste time taking them out of her mouth once they are in. She can still be picky, and periodically we need to convince her that she actually likes something, which usually means getting her to cry so we can shove a spoonful of whatever we have into her mouth. Once she tastes it she will stop crying and gobble it up. But if she likes something she uses the palm of her hand to cram it into her mouth as fast as she can.

I am a relatively neat person and I don’t like sticky messes, so I’ve learned to practice Zen calmness at meal times (repeat five times before during and after meals: om a-ri da-ra sa-ba-ha). For example, I took Zoe out to lunch at a local diner (taking Zoe out for lunch is something I do pretty regularly). I usually try to choose things that we can share and that are relatively neat, like sliced turkey or something with big beans. On this occasion I ordered a taco salad with beef chili (mostly because I was tired of turkey sandwiches). There were a number of reasons this was a mistake. It came coated in finely shredded cheese, and she is not supposed to have cheese until she is one, so I had to clean off each piece of food I put in front of her. Also, the chili had far too few beans, so I had to dig through the salad like a diamond miner. While we were waiting I, in a moment of carelessness, left the water glass a little too close to Zoe and looked away for a brief moment. She had already thrown the paper placemat and the crayons to the floor, so fortunately they did not get wet. Everything else did. Then lunch arrived. Zoe is at that stage where she likes to see everything that goes into her mouth, even if it’s already there. I will feed her a little guacamole, one of her favorites, and she will ooze it out onto her fingers, play with it for a moment, then try to get it back into her mouth. She does this with every bite of everything we feed her (with the exception of tiny orange pieces—standard orange slices she will squeeze until the juice puddles around her). It seems like she is eating a lot these days, but I suspect that at least half of what leaves the spoon is actually ending up on her or on a surface near her. Normally our lunches out are relaxing, but I left the diner feeling a bit worn out. I’m not sure I’d be welcomed back into that particular diner anytime soon. I think from now on I will make sure that they have turkey sandwiches on the menu before I sit down.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Into the Crib, Part 2

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here at Zoe central. Zoe has sprouted a couple of new teeth. She doesn’t like us prying her mouth open to watch them come in, but we can often get her to laugh while we are dangling her upside down, providing us a good peek inside. It looks like we may be up to six teeth, and given how much she likes to put her mouth on everything, I suspect we will soon see bite marks on the coffee table. I’m looking forward to her back teeth coming in so we can move away from foods that require little more than tough gums to masticate.

She has also started a very distinct babbling. “Bah, bah, bah. Blah, blah, bah. A bah. A bah” Sometimes she will say it directly to us, almost in response to something we have said, and other times she will be occupied with some task and just sit there talking to herself. We of course assume she saying Ma or Da, or possibly she is trying to solve K + sinK - K*sinK - π/2 = 0. Either way she is definitely saying something. In fact, Alison was sitting with her a day or so ago and I walked up; Alison swears she said daddy. I didn’t hear it, and even after telling Zoe that she wouldn’t get dinner until she said it again I couldn’t get her to repeat it. We keep hearing words mixed in with the gibberish, but I don’t know if we are hearing real words or we’re just performing some parental conjuring.

It was just in my last post that I talked about Zoe pulling herself up, and then quickly learning how to get back to the ground. Now she is not only up and down with ease, but she is this close (visualize my thumb and index finger about an inch apart) to walking. If we are lying in bed she will use one of us to pull herself up to a standing position and let go. If she manages more than a couple of seconds we will applaud and with a big grin she will repeat the trick. She likes to do this on the bed so that when she falls she has a soft landing. But the big step came yesterday when I was lying on her mat and she pulled herself up on me and stood for almost five seconds. The only direction she has left to go is forward.

I think the biggest development since my last post is that we have almost transitioned her to her crib. Yes, you read that correctly, she is not sleeping in our bed (except for naps and if she has a bad dream). On May 7, 2007 in my seventh blog post (this is number forty) I wrote Into the Crib, Part 1. This week started part 2. She spent four full nights and two partial nights in her own bed. Unfortunately we are not sleeping any better. The problem is that she does not cry for very long when we put her down. This can only mean that something is wrong, and we’ll sit with an ear pressed to the monitor trying to interpret every noise filtering through. Unfortunately our monitor, which sits on the bookcase next to the window, also picks up sounds from outside, so when that little nocturnal animal runs through the bushes we interpret the sound as Zoe getting tangled up in her blanket and trying to kick free. It’s all we can do to keep ourselves from rushing in. The first couple of nights, when we’d check on her, we would find her half-asleep sitting up, her little head bobbing forward. Finding her like that was almost worse than her screaming for an hour (I said almost). I realize that the video monitors were four times as expensive as the already-expensive digital version we bought, but I think Alison and I would be better rested this week if we could just see her for a couple of seconds every minute.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Help! I’m Standing and I Can’t Sit Down!

I did mention this last week, but it briefly got worse, than suddenly got much better, which definitely interfered with the title of this weeks post (which was clever enough that I decided to keep it anyway; and by clever I mean in that hackneyed, threadbare sort of way). I mentioned that Zoe was pulling herself up but having trouble figuring out how to sit back down. Well, during the week she was pulling herself up on everything, all the time, but instantly wanting to move on, so she’d cry because she couldn’t get down. I’d put her in a sitting position, she’d shuffle to another object and we’d repeat the process. Well, by the end of the week, not only had she figured out how to sit, but at one point she was doing squats; standing, squatting, standing, squatting. There was even one brief moment when she took both hands off the table she was standing against. Think first step on the moon. Orville and Wilbur’s first tentative flight. “I have a dream.”

As usual I was trying to get Zoe to take her nap. This usually means I lie down on the bed with a book and let Zoe crawl all over me until just the right moment when I pull her down beside me and she closes her eyes and goes to sleep (it has to be perfectly timed). Usually, when she is being particularly active I will verbally remind her that she is supposed to be napping, at which point she will stop what she is doing and clap her hands. “No,” I tell her, “nap, not clap.” At which point she will clap some more. Subsequent requests that she stop playing and nap are met with defiant stares. She doesn’t even have the courtesy to stop trying to bite the tiny, red nose off the little man on her just for the bed toy.

I’ve noticed, recently, a little detail that I think most parents are guilty of but few will admit to (or maybe don’t even recognize that they are doing). I do it intentionally now, but usually after catching myself doing it unintentionally. What happens is you are trying to get your child’s attention and they are ignoring you (although I like to assume that she is so focused on her task that she really doesn’t hear me). You call her name a few times, then do a little whistle or cluck your tongue, exactly as one would call a pet. The only difference is that pets usually respond.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

The Best Clapper in the House

Last week I talked about how curious Zoe is and how she will get into, or try to get into, everything. If you don’t want her to get into it or touch it than you absolutely cannot leave it within her reach. She will find it. Alison and I have frequent oh! moments, where we see her reaching for a glass that’s just a little too close to the edge of the table, or a precariously piled stack of magazines that she is about to pull down on top of herself. But I didn’t mention how cognitive she has become. She quickly imitates our actions, and takes noticeable enjoyment in our praise of her accomplishments. For example, clapping is something I tried to teach her starting when she was only a few months old. Now every action requires clapping. And because she is cuter than a tiny kitten, when she claps everyone claps. Than she claps some more. Then everyone else claps some more. Than, pretty soon, everyone in the room is singing the, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands,” song. Zoe may be learning from our every action, but she causes everyone who happens to be in the room with her to visibly lose IQ points.

Did I mention that her two top front teeth are coming in? They started to break through while we were on vacation, which meant that she woke up every hour. Fortunately she still prefers Mommy at 3:00 AM, but usually just a little effort is needed to get her back to sleep, sometimes a quick snack and sometimes just shoving the pacifier back into her mouth does the trick. (A quick word on the pacifier. Early on someone asked us what we called our pacifier, since apparently you’re supposed to give it a cute pet name. Alison and I decided we would avoid cute names for it and refer to it simply as ‘the pacifier’. It’s not that we don’t have cute names for things. For example, I call preface almost every object, living or not, with Mr.; Mr. sippy cup. Mr. Kitty. Mr. Tissue. And Zoe’s name is never just Zoe, it’s Zoe Zo. Zoe-Zo is wearing Mr. Shoe-y shoe). Since last week her pulling herself up has developed. If two pieces of furniture are close enough, she can transfer her standing self from one to another., though she still has trouble getting back to a sitting position. While we were visiting someone recently with a round coffee table, Zoe figured out how to walk around its perimeter. She couldn’t get down, so she just kept circling. I suggested we space Cheerios around the entire table and head out for drinks.

See new photos in 10th & 11th month of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass