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

Suddenly She’s Doing Stuff

Sometimes I like to engage Zoe by lying on my back on her play mat and closing my eyes for thirty to forty five minutes. During that time I become a human jungle gym. She’ll crawl all over me, back and forth, over the top, until either she offsets herself and falls on her head and screams or lands on my crotch and I scream. Sometimes, rarely, she’ll get bored and actually play with one of the dozens of toys spread across the floor. What she prefers to play with, however, is the pile of newspapers that “we will get to, as soon as we have a few moments,” or… well, basically anything that isn’t a toy. She is more likely to play with her toys if I am joining in, but if I am sitting on the couch (or engaging her from a horizontal position with my eyes closed while on the couch) she will need to be near me, climbing up the side of the coffee table pulling everything to the floor. There is basically a six-inch strip directly down the center of the coffee table that she can’t yet reach, but the coffee table only remains organized for about ten minutes in a twenty-four hour period. The rest of the time it is covered in crap that needs to be shuffled about whenever Zoe is awake. If I’m sitting at the dinning table she will need to be crawling around the legs of the table and chairs looking for old Cheerio’s to eat. And if I head into the kitchen she will follow me in and head straight for the cats bowls.

At ten months old, she is curious about everything and is so distractible that she gets distracted from her distractions. She has to explore every bag within reach, every cabinet that is open, and every speck on the floor. She can pull herself up, so anything that is within her reach she will grab. She has also been making climbing motions with her legs. She seems to know what needs to be done, lifting one leg to pull herself up, she just can’t figure out all the mechanics of the task. It won’t be long before I find her on top of furniture that was previously safe for all the stuff we pulled from lower spaces.

She has also recently started performing tricks on command, such as clapping and dancing (her dancing consists of a cute little head and shoulder wag). Yesterday I wanted to demonstrate--to a complete stranger at an Old Navy store--Zoe’s shuffling crawl, so I put my cell phone down on the floor and told her to fetch, and she obliged. I am now training her to fetch my slippers and the newspaper so I won’t need to get a dog. However, even though she has learned a few tricks, she still doesn’t understand spatial differences. When she gets to the top of the stairs she recognizes that it requires some different action but can’t conceptualize what is required. After she ‘touches’ the open space for a few moments, she will put her hand out as if she is going to crawl and just leans herself forward. I think she is trying to place her hand down on the next step. It’s a good theory but doesn’t explain why she’ll crawl right off the edge of the bed.

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

There’s a Superfund Site in my Daughters Diaper

Zoe has moved almost completely to a real food diet, and we are living the consequences. The first is a glut of breast milk. It’s beginning to fill our freezer and refrigerator. Okay, maybe fill is an exaggeration but I wish breast milk tasted good on ice cream. I would not go wanting. The other is in her bedroom, used only for diaper changing these days (her crib is used only when I need her in a safe place for a few minutes—she screams like we’re breaking toes if she is left in there for more than ten minutes). Alison has suggested we make a mobile from air fresheners. I won’t go into the composition of her diapers contents, but I will say that I’ve learned to breath entirely through my mouth. In the past, in situations when excluding my nose from the breathing process would have been advantageous, I’ve always taken a little sniff, my curiosity always overpowering my better interest. During Alison’s cesarean the surgeon performing the procedure suggested I breath through my mouth (which did not help allay my anxiety.) I couldn’t help but to surreptitiously sniff a little—stopping short of a full nasal inhale—and was fortunate not to smell anything that would have provoked that legendary father-passing-out-in-the –operating-room-during-childbirth event. But Zoe’s diapers have transcended bad. We have crossed into another dimension. Trust me, it’s bad.

As I write this I’ve been watching Zoe play. For a few minutes she was content to take her plastic nesting boxes and repeatedly bash it into her wooden puzzle of farm animals. I can understand the pleasure she must derive from such an action. Often I wish I could smash with abandon without suffering any consequences. She then moved over to the pile of books (those cardboard ones that withstand multiple chewing’s) and actually flipped one open and turned a couple of pages. “Look, Honey, she’s reading!” She’s at an awkward stage where she’s curious about everything but does not have the coordination to do much about it. She can’t open boxes or operate her monkey-in-a-box or nest her nesting boxes. But she’s very good at pulling things off the coffee table and finding small, chokeable sized items that we overlooked on the floor. Speaking of choking, yesterday I took a First Aid and CPR for All Ages class. It was either that or clean and childproof the house. The instructor, a retired fireman (overweight, diabetic and leaning on a crutch) spent a third of the class instructing, a third telling ‘example of situation’ stories from his years in the fire department, and a third of the class raining doom down upon us in the form of doorstops, toilets, electrical wire, perverts, car seats, house plants, germs, cordless phones, and unscrupulous retailers intent on selling us parents useful albeit deadly accessories. Although I now feel a little more comfortable knowing that I have at least some inkling of what to do if Zoe gets eats my iPod Nano, I have decided that it would be a good idea just to move into an empty, padded (but not too padded) shipping container until Zoe is older.

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

Year End Roundoup

It’s just past 5:00 PM on this last day of 2007. Alison and Zoe are napping before the festivities tonight and I'm sitting in our darkening living room watching a brilliant sunset light up the sky over the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. It was also just around this time of the day when Alison and I were married in this same room three years ago, today. In a week Zoe will be ten months old. Although not yet walking or talking she has definitely developed a unique personality and clearly remembers certain songs and books. When we play music she does this little shoulder and head dance that is cuter than a box full of rabbits. When we get to the, "Down came the rain," part in the itsy-bitsy spider song she does a big downward motion with her arms. And when we tell her we’re going to read her the Pajama Time book she gets all excited and does her little head wag.


And she may not be crawling but she’s fast and hardly ever falls and whacks her head anymore. She’s particularly interested in the cat food, and will cross the kitchen in the time it takes me to fill their bowls and put them on the floor. I have to remove her from the kitchen else she will pull their bowls away from them as they eat.

I’m also happy to report that Zoe seems to be eating enthusiastically now. After my last blog posting we discovered that she is a bit anemic, so I have made a big push to sit her down three times a day with iron rich foods. The most iron rich food is liver, and surprisingly she actually likes chopped liver. Alison, the resident vegetarian, is thrilled that she is getting the big doses of iron but refuses to cook or feed Zoe the liver.

Another thing we were told to do is to start brushing her teeth (she still only has the bottom front two). I was afraid that she would fight us but she really seems to enjoy it. We bought her own tiny little toothbrush and after we get her into her pajamas at night I’ll put a pin-drop of toothpaste on the brush and manage a good thirty seconds before she has had enough. She hasn’t really learned the spitting part, which is why I only use a dot of toothpaste. I think once she learns to spit it will be even more fun.

It’s time to get everyone up and ready for our big night in the city. I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that Zoe gets to visit with everyone who reads this blog.

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

Zoe Hits the Road

It used to be that I could put Zoe down on her little play mat and basically ignore her while I did stuff, like write this blog (how can I be expected to write a cute blog about Zoe if she’s bugging me all the time?). Now when I put her down she stays put for maybe five minutes, than will sidle—no, more like crab-walk—all around the room to get into everything she shouldn’t get into. First she’ll make her way over to the stereo to fiddle with the knobs and to go through the CD’s and DVD’s. She’ll then make her way over to the fireplace tools. Once blackened, she’ll spend a while by the box next to the couch that holds all the take-out menus and electronic gear and pens and other do-dads that hang out in the living room. On her way across the room she’ll pause by the coffee table to see if there is anything she can reach that she can pull to the floor and hopefully tear. If not she’ll continue on to the stack of newspapers where she will sit for twenty minutes or more tearing them all into little shreds. If she still has energy she will make her way to the top of the stairs, and if I have not blocked the stairs with the box containing the uninstalled gate she will attempt to fall down the stairs. She actually knows what, “Zoe, please don’t do that,” means but chooses to ignore me.

It’s fun to watch her move about, and interesting to note how unaware she is of possible danger. Her head clears the coffee table by maybe half an inch, and I’ve been there to catch her as she simply leans forward and free falls at the top step. She has also learned how to open kitchen drawers, but doesn’t realize that they will hit her in the face if she pulls while she is sitting in front of it. Nor that she should remove her fingers before she closes them, something I frequently forget as well.. Fortunately I keep all the uninstalled cabinet locks in a top drawer, so she won’t choke on them.

She has also been eating a lot more solid foods. We had a ritual every morning where we would sit together on the floor and share a bowl of Cheerios in soymilk. Except today we had her nine-month checkup and I learned that she should not have soy for at least a year and that we should not share a bowl because of bacteria. Apparently I’m loaded with nasty bacteria. Not everyone, just me. The pediatrician suggested Cheerios in breast milk (yuk!) or formula. Definitely puts a kink in my morning bonding routine. I also do things like share my burrito with her. I’ll pull out a little piece of chicken or steak and suck the nasty spicy stuff off and bite it into a less chokeable size, and then feed her the licked-clean tasty morsel. Apparently another no-no. I would have thought the salsa would kill any bacteria. Fortunately she likes bagels and animal crackers, which don’t require the introduction of my bacteria to enjoy. When we give her the crackers she gets all exited and gives us a big head wagging smile. Then she will work on that single cracker for fifteen minutes, slowly turning it to mush, which she uses to create a cookie-kabuki mask. Fact: one animal cracker can cover a twelve square feet of surface area.

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

The Big Apple of My Eye

Last week Zoe made her first trip to New York City (excluding a trip made in utero). We were only in town a few days (Alison was there for a conference) but it is mid December and it was cold (no I’m not a wuss, I’ve just become comfortably accustomed to California weather). With Zoe, there’s the problem of not knowing how cold she really is, so we simply pile her in many layers. We bought her a jacket before we left, and a cute monkey hat and mittens (it’s not a hat for monkeys, it’s a hat with a monkey mouth and ears—very cute). We also were given some fleece-lined pants. After layering her in a long-sleeved shirt, sweater and all the other necessary cold weather gear she basically sat mummified in her stroller in a semi-comatose state. Then again, when I take her for walks at home she reclines in her stroller in a semi-comatose state as well. Although in California we just call it being laid-back.

In New York Zoe experienced her first snow. Unfortunately there were only about a dozen tiny flakes, so I don’t think she even noticed. She also took in the art at MOMA, but slept though most of it (yey!). At the Metropolitan Museum of Art she was more interested in her three cousins and the skylights than the art. At the Italian restaurant she ate a double portion of paper tablecloth cover. At the Indian restaurant she was carried around by at least three of the waiters while we ate. I left a big tip. As we passed the horse-drawn carriages I stopped so she could meet her first horse. She seemed confused. Only after I had been petting them and holding Zoe’s face inches from theirs did one of the drivers (drivers?) tell me that they (they being the horses, not the drivers) sometimes bite. And she may have, it’s not really clear, she may have completely ignored the famous Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. If I had to hazard a guess as to what her favorite New York attraction was, I would say it was the large mirror mounted to the wall in our hotel room.

All in all New York was a lot of fun, but it was a short trip and we didn’t get to see everyone or everything we wanted to. Having a baby constrains one somewhat, as you are at the mercy of naptimes and other baby induced limitations. But on the other hand it is fun carrying her around the city, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of people telling me that Zoe is an adorable baby. Maybe the people who say that to me say that to every parent, even if their kid is an ogre, but I like to think it’s because Zoe is special. Take a look at the photos. I’m sure you’ll agree with me.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass. I’m behind in updating my photos, but check back soon and there will be some great new photos.