1.8 or, Big City Lights

Dear Miriam,

The holidays have arrived, and you love the Christmas lights.  Grandpa and Uncle Alex and Corbin put them up on Thanksgiving Day.  You love to turn them on and make them blink.  One night after you helped Grandma turn them on, you went around saying, "Red, green, red, green, red, green!"

The only way you can tell it's the holidays is because people seem to really enjoy decorating their houses.  The weather has gotten cooler but it still feels like fall to me, with warm, sunny days.  You still go on long walks with Grandma in the mornings.  We still play outside most afternoons.  It's really nice to be able to just play outside in a hoodie without getting all bundled up.  It has gotten cooler at night, cool enough that I got out your space heater for your room.  I have to remember to set it lower than we did in MN, though, otherwise your room gets way too warm.


We did some science this month when a package of frozen steaks came with a big block of dry ice.  We spent some time making plain water and soapy water bubble.  You thought it was pretty interesting for a while, although not the several hours that Corbin did.

One of your favorite things to do right now is to take your farm animals (and cars, and insects, and whatever) and put them on the kid sized table in the living room.  You will spend an hour putting them all in the right spots.  You bring them in a show them to us and then take them back to the living room and rearrange them on the table.  It's funny to watch because I can never figure out why something goes in the spot that you choose.  To me, they just end up in random places, but you seem to have some kind of organization in mind.

You also love to watch movies.  You love the Sorcerer's Apprentice part of Fantasia.  You like the beginning of Black Beauty.  You really like the Dora DVD that we have, which you pronounce, "Dorda."  And you especially love Winnie the Pooh movies.  We have two different stuffed Pooh dolls and you carry them both around.  You carry around the stuffed Piglet doll.  You even carry around a Tigger Pez dispenser.  Pretty soon, I'll need to move the Pooh books to your room, since Corbin doesn't read them much anymore.

Dad went to China for work this month.  He was gone just over a week.  I don't think you really realized that he was gone during the week, since you mostly see him on the weekends.  I know he missed seeing you.

We had a lot of holiday visitors this month.  Grandma's sisters, Aunt Cele and Aunt Alice, came to visit.  We took them to the Botanic Garden and the Cabrillo Aquarium and the Santa Monica Pier.  You walked with them down to the nature center at the Madrona Marsh, too.  They helped us celebrate Grandpa's birthday and we even had a Christmas party with them.  We called it our first Christmas.  You had fun seeing the little Christmas tree that we put up and helping me open your presents.  Aunt Alice gave you a little stuffed duck which you liked very much and a donkey and a dog to go with your animal collection.

Then for Thanksgiving, Uncle Alex, Aunt Lena, Maria, Aunt Tabetha and our friend Ty all came over for dinner.  Aunt Lena and Maria made a delicious turkey with stuffing.  We put up Christmas lights and played games and had a very nice day.  You ate a pile of turkey, which Maria particularly enjoyed watching.

You are sleeping much better now.  We spent a week doing some sleep training with you, and now you're much better about laying yourself down and falling asleep without us in the room.  You still protest when we put you in bed, but you're usually asleep in five or ten minutes.  Although one day, instead of taking a nap, you played with your stuffed animals for an hour.  Grandma tried to take a nap, but she kept hearing you say things like, "Oh, no!" and "What's that?" and "I see you!"  Those are some of the new words you've started saying lately.  You've also started saying, "No!"and, "here."  What really surprised us was when you started counting with us (up to 12) and when you started singing the alphabet song with us.

We were not surprised at the singing part.  You love listening to music and you like it when we sing to you.  Sometimes that's the only way I can get you to hold still while I change your diaper.  You like to dance around with us to any music, but you really love one CD with dance versions of all the usual nursery rhymes.  That CD also has the Chicken Dance, which Grandma and I danced for you once.  Now when that track starts, you say, "Chicken!  Chicken!" and start trying to flap your little wings.  One of these days, I'm going to get video of it, because if that isn't the perfect blackmail material, I don't know what is.

Love,
Mom

Playing with dry ice:

Playing with Scout:

At the Botanic Garden with Grandpa:

Playing in the sand box:

Miriam's Table of Toys:

Watching movies:

At the Cabrillo Aquarium:

4.9 or, Enter the Holidays

Dear Corbin,

The holidays have begun!  You can only really tell because of the lawn decorations.  People seem to get very into decorating their houses and yards for each holiday.  The weather continues to be like a warm Midwestern Autumn, which is so nice for you and Miriam.  We can still play outside all afternoon.  You even put shorts on one day.

Our month started off slowly, but ended up quite busy.  You had your last gymnastics and swimming lessons for that session.  We were all happy to be done with swimming lessons.  We might pick them up next summer when it gets warm again.  The whole family was invited to the last gymnastics lesson, so that you could demonstrate all of the things you had learned.  Man, you really like that class.  It's understandable--you got to run and jump and climb, all the things you love to do.  So when the registration started for the next session, we signed you right up for the session that starts in January.

We did some science this month.  An order of frozen steaks came with a big block of dry ice, so we spent a whole afternoon watching it bubble in both plain water and soapy water.  I thought it would be fun for a little while, but you kept it going for a couple of hours.

Dad went on his first work trip to China.  He was gone for just over a week.  You and I drove him up to the airport, so that you could say goodbye to him and see the planes, but you fell asleep on the way there.  I tried to wake you up at the airport, but you slept all the way back home.  A couple of nights when he was gone, you asked if he would come and snuggle you for a while.  I had to remind you that he was around the world from us.  It didn't seem to distress you, but it made me a little sad.

That same week, Grandma's sisters, Aunt Alice and Aunt Cele, came to visit.  It was fun to see them.  We took them to the Botanic Gardens and the Cabrillo Aquarium and the Santa Monica Pier.  We even had a little Christmas celebration with them.  We called it our First Christmas.  You helped Grandma decorate the little fake tree that we have.  You and Miriam and I made gift bags out of brown lunch bags and Christmas stickers.  I gave everyone little cloth animal ornaments.  Grandma gave you a set of card games aimed at children, so we've been playing some Old Maid and even some Hearts, which I think is fun.

Grandpa's birthday was this month, so we got to have birthday treats for him.  You and Miriam gave him a DVD of Cars, which you all enjoyed watching.  And we gave him the cookbook from a cooking show that he's discovered, so we'll have to go through and find some recipes to make.

Speaking of recipes, the month ended with Thanksgiving.  Aunt Lena and her mom Maria made a delicious turkey and stuffing.  You helped Grandpa, Dad and Uncle Alex put up some Christmas lights on the front of the house.  Aunt Tabetha came over with her friend Ty and we made them play Old Maid with us.  It was a very nice day, and a nice way to end the month.

Love,
Mom
 

Fun with dry ice:

1st Christmas tree:

At Cabrillo Aquarium:

 

 

At the South Coast Botanic Garden:

Growing a seed you brought home from school:

My favorite boy:

1.7 or, Sleep Dep

Dear Miriam,

This month your sleep patterns went crazy.  You had been in a good routine for a while.  Now you've hit some phase where you either don't want to go to sleep, don't want to stay asleep, or both.  It's okay at 8pm, but it's really brutal at 1am.  One of the mornings that you woke up at 4:30am, even the people at the dog park told me I looked tired.

Dad and I have been talking about when Corbin went through phases like this, and the ways that we either coped or readjusted his sleep patterns.  It was much easier then because it was only the three of us in the house.  Now that Grandma and Grandpa are in the room next to yours, we feel a lot more pressure to keep you quiet instead of letting you cry.  So it's been more difficult to use some of the strategies that worked before.  Of course, the one person in the house who you don't wake up is Corbin.

You do have a molar coming in, so I thought that might be the problem.  But even when we dose you with Tylenol, you still want to be awake.  We moved your nap time earlier in the day in the hopes that you would be more tired at bed time.  I think that worked for a couple of days.  If you had any kind of symptom of anything--a cold, a fever, an ear infection--then we could maybe figure it out.  Instead, it seems to be just an annoying change in your habits.

Other habits of yours remain the same.  You still want to read all the time.  You still like to build big towers with the Mega Bloks, although now you've started to decorate them with your necklaces.  That's pretty funny.  You still love to play with stuffed animals.  Sometimes you like to wrap them up in your blankets, or make them play peek-a-boo with you.  You still love to take walks.  You still love to watch movies, especially Winnie the Pooh movies.  You still love to dance, and you especially like to fall asleep on Dad's shoulder while he's dancing around with you. 


This month, you had some adventures and missed out on some others.  We all went to the Western Museum of Flight, which was pretty cool.  You got to sit in some airplanes and watch some small planes take off and land.  We bought you each a little toy plane for a souvenir; Corbin chose an Air Force fighter jet for you.  We went to the South Coast Botanical Garden, which you seemed to enjoy.  You tired yourself out walking around the different gardens that they had and I only had to pull cactus spines out of your hand once.

You did miss out on Halloween.  We took Corbin to the Halloween Carnival at Wilson Park while you were napping.  That's also why you ended up missing his school picnic, too.  But you did get to visit with Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena and Maria when they came up to visit.  At one point when I was trying to get the tables set for dinner, I handed you to Uncle Alex with the book Go, Dog. Go!  You turned around and looked at him with the most suspicious look--it made all of us laugh.

You've added some more words to your vocabulary.  They happen to include "nap" and "no," which you don't actually say together.  You're much more likely to tell us it's your nap time when you're tired.  That makes like easier some days--we appreciate that.  Sometimes you come out with things that are surprising for your age.  One day, you counted to 10 with me.  On another day, we were looking at some memory game cards.  You handed one to me and said, "Circle."  I have a feeling when you actually start talking, it's going to be interesting times.

I should mention that one of your new words is Mama, which was only a few months behind "cookie."  I see how you are.

Love,
Mom


Eating Dad's birthday cake:

Despite your expression in this picture, you like to vacuum:

 Bunny ears:

 A picture in which we actually look alike:

 Building towers with Grandpa:

 At the Western Museum of Flight:

Dance party aftermath:

4.8 or, Flights of Fancy

Dear Corbin,

It's been kind of a busy month.  You've been doing school and lessons.  I'm still not working, so we still go to the park a lot.  We have been meeting some of the other kids who play at the park, and sometimes that works out pretty well.  One day we were walking back to our car and another car pulled up to the curb to park.  You stopped and were staring at the car.  I thought you might have been a little scared or startled, but then you pointed and said, "Mom, it's Uncle Alex!"  I got very confused for a moment, but when I walked back to see what you were talking about, the man got out of the car and I saw that he was wearing military fatigues.

Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena and Lena's mom Maria did come up to visit on a different day.  They brought the movie Ice Age 2, which you promptly made them watch with you.  Uncle Alex played Legos with you for a long time, too.  They also brought up an airplane model, which was far too old for you, but which you begged to put together.  I managed to put you off until the following Saturday, but then we went to the Western Museum of Flight at the Torrance airport, and I bought you and Miriam little toy metal airplanes instead.  So now hopefully the model airplane can live in a drawer somewhere until I'm reasonably sure that you won't glue yourself to a table while putting it together.

The Museum of Flight was small but interesting.  They had big models of some aircraft and a large collection of little models.  There was a small experimental aircraft that you could sit in, and a large fighter jet that you could sit in.  One of the best parts for you was being able to sit and watch the actual runways, where the small planes were taking off and landing.  That was very cool.

You still don't like swimming lessons, but we ended up out at the storage unit one day and I found the bin with our snorkels in it.  So we brought that home and you've been playing with the snorkel in the bathtub.  One day we even filled up the giant tub in the master bedroom and let you play in there.  It's so big you even went diving for a quarter a couple of times.

We explored a new fruit this month.  Grandpa walked past a pomegranate tree in a neighbor's yard.  He asked if we could pick a couple of them and the man said we could.  So we brought home a couple of pomegranates, and you've been having fun sucking on the little seeds when you need a sweet treat.

Our tomato harvest was quite large this month.  Luckily, the tomatoes themselves are the small cherry tomatoes.  We also discovered a bunch of caterpillars on the tomato plant.  We got all excited at first, but when I tried to look up what kind they might be, it turned out they were a pesty type of moth.  We still took a couple to school in the hopes that your class would be able to watch a moth come out of a cocoon.  We'll see if it happens.  Speaking of school, your school picnic was this month, over at Wilson Park.  It was fun to meet other parents and put some names with faces.  There were some parents that Dad knew from dropping you off in the mornings, and some parents that I knew from picking you up in the afternoon.  There were some crafts to do, including decorating your school shirt.  You painted a volcano on it, naturally.

I've been very homesick this month.  It snowed in Minneapolis, which was just a reminder that we don't live in the Midwest any more.  We had some cool days here, but this weekend it's supposed to be back up to 80 degrees.  That doesn't feel like autumn to me.  Dad and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, and we didn't get to go to our favorite restaurant.  It's Dad's birthday this week, and while we haven't had a big party for him in a couple of years, we usually managed to do something with friends.  And we're coming up on Halloween, which we usually spent visiting with other families on our block.  I miss all of those things.

On another Halloween note, we've been reading a graphic novel called One Spooky Night.  We just grabbed a couple of graphic novels from the library.  You've started drawing pictures where there is so much action happening that eventually the image is indecipherable.  So I thought I'd introduce you to graphic novels, in the hopes that you'll start drawing a series of images instead of one on top of the other.  You've always liked comic strips and you seem to enjoy the graphic novel format.  Now, if only they made a magna doodle divided into panels, we'd be all set.

For Halloween, you were a skeleton.  You had decided on that at the beginning of the month, so I managed to find a skeleton hoodie and some skeleton pajamas.  You wore your costume to school and the park and then to the Halloween Carnival, also at Wilson Park.  Dad took the afternoon off of work and the three of us had a fun time playing carnival games.  You came home with a good amount of candy--enough to keep you happy for a while.  It was a fun day.  Although, I do hope that you end up trick-or-treating in the snow or rain sometime in your life, just so that you can understand how Halloween used to be for your parents.

Love,
Mom

Oh, and PS, I cut your hair in a mohawk.


Tomatoes:

  Pomegranates:

Airplanes:

Birthday cake:

 Picnic crafts:

 Skeleton Boy:

 Playing Go:

 Halloween Carnival:

1.6 or, Smile!

Dear Miriam,

Your month started with a visit to the pediatric dentist to see about your odd bottom tooth.  It turns out that at some point, you broke it.  And not just a little crack, either, but totally broke at the roots.  So the reason it looked so weird was because it was slowly falling out.  When the dentists saw the x-rays, they were all quite concerned and they made time that same afternoon for us to come back and have it taken out.  Fortunately, it was a quick operation; it only took about 20 minutes.  You seemed to do pretty well--you were crying when you came back, of course, but you settled down right away when the nurse gave you to me.  The left side of your mouth was a little bruised from where they had to hold it open, and of course you had a terribly ugly hole in your gum.  We  gave you some extra ibuprofin the next day, but you went right back to eating everything in sight, so that was good.  They even sent the actual tooth part home with us, which made me laugh at first but was actually quite nice of them.  They also gave you a balloon, which was by far the best part of the whole deal.

The middle of the month was fairly quiet.  We went to the park a lot, because it's right on the way home from Corbin's pre-school.  If you're not too tired, Grandma or Grandpa will walk down to the park with you while I pick up Corbin.  Then we'll all drive home together.  You love to swing--you'll swing and swing until you're almost falling asleep.  But you love to climb, too, and you like to go down the slides.  There was one afternoon that we managed to get into the perfect rhythm of me catching you at the bottom of a slide, and then you climbing up the stairs and sliding down the slide again.  It was great for about 5 minutes.

You've been playing with your clothes lately.  You'll bring us a sweater to put on you.  You brought Grandma a hat one day.  You'll put on Corbin's shoes or hats.  We bought you a new dresser this month, that has bins that you can reach on your own.  You celebrated by pulling out the pants bin and then making me help you put on 7 pairs of pants at one time.

You continue to want to eat whatever and whenever anyone else does, but you're also starting to insist on eating however we do, too.  I came down to breakfast this morning and you were fussing because Dad had given you dry cereal in a bowl and no spoon.  I said, "Do you want milk in your cereal, Miriam?" and you perked right up.  I can't blame you--4 other people sit around the table eating cereal with milk and a spoon, so why shouldn't you?  I found a baby knife in the drawer the other day, so I've started giving you pieces of fruit just a bit larger than bite sized and letting you stab at them with your knife.  You don't manage to cut them very often, but it makes you happy to try.

You are 18 months old, so it was time for your next check up.  You are in the 6th percentile in weight for girls who are your height, up from the 3rd percentile, so we were happy about that.  The funny part was that your head size is in the 53rd percentile.  That explains why your 12 month old shirts wouldn't fit over your head anymore.  You're perfectly healthy otherwise, but they still gave you four shots and drew blood.  You would have gotten away with 3 shots, but apparently in CA, they have to vaccinate for Hepatitis A as well as B and C.  Which probably means that the rest of us should get vaccinated, too.  Lucky us.

Grandma also decided that it was time for some professional portraits of you, which of course we decided after I gave you a little haircut.  It was a good thing that turned out well, otherwise we would have had to wait on those pictures.  Normally, you like having your picture taken, but you were nervous enough about being in the little portrait studio that you kept trying to sit on my lap.  Despite that, the photographer got good enough shots that if I were employed right now, I might have gotten more prints than we did.  Maybe I'm biased, but you're an awfully cute baby girl, missing tooth and all.

Love,
Mom

Gap tooth smile:

Oh, my.

 At the park:

 Not really enjoying the haircut:

 Fashionista:

Portraits: