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:

4.7 or, Homebody

Dear Corbin,

This month you started pre-school, swimming lessons and gymnastics lessons.  You would rather stay home.

You keep telling us how much you don't like school.  It makes me worried for your future. Especially when you also say that you're going to live with me forever.  In fact, one night when I said something like, "When you grow up and live by yourself..." you actually got so sad you cried.  I hope that you manage to find something fun about school.  I wonder if you'll enjoy it more when you've learned to read, although me and your Dad mainly read to escape the fact that we didn't like school, so maybe I'm being optimistic on that one.

I thought that you would like swimming lessons, after you had so much fun in the pool a couple of weeks ago.  You were talking about how you wanted to learn how to dive and things like that.  But after the first time your instructor got you to go underwater, you didn't like it anymore.  So before the second lesson, we went out and bought you a pair of goggles.  You forgot to put them on for your lesson, though, so hopefully the third time will be the charm.  You have practiced wearing them in the bathtub, although you didn't put your face underwater, you just poured water over your head and laughed and laughed.

You have enjoyed the gymnastics lessons, which we kind of expected.  I hope that you continue to like them.  I wouldn't mind seeing you stick with gymnastics for a long time.  I think it would be a good sport for you, and I would certainly rather go to gymnastics meets than baseball games.

So we haven't really done much this month.  Except go to the park a lot.  We drove home from school past Greenwood park one day, and you wanted to stop and play.  Since then, we've gone a couple of times each week.  Sometimes it's just you and I.  Sometimes Grandma or Grandpa (or both) walk there with Miriam and we meet up with them.  Sometimes there are other children there, which is fun.  One day you caught a big grasshopper, so we had to head home right away to put him in the bug house.  He managed to survive his afternoon in the bug house, and you were very good about letting him go before bed time.

A while ago, we had this conversation:
Me: You're driving me crazy!
You: You're driving me coconuts!
And then we both laughed.  So now you say, "Oh, coconuts!" fairly often, when something has gone wrong.

And this one:
You:  "What if the whole world was California?" 
Dad:  "What if it was?"
You:  "Then I'd be so happy!"
Dad:  "Why would that make you happy?"
You:  "Because California is ...  ... a fun place!"

I hope wherever life takes you, it's a fun place.

Love,
Mom

 

Notes from LA: The Weather Section

The weather section of the LA Times takes up over half a page.  Half a page of newspaper is a lot of space for a city where the day-to-day change in the weather is under five degrees.  So, why half a page?

There are five micro-climates here: the LA Basin (which I usually think of as Downtown), the Valleys, the Beaches, the Mountains and the Deserts.  So each of those areas has it's own forecast.  Then, they tell you about the air quality, the tides, the surf, the UV index, the almanac information, and the rise and set times for both the sun and the moon.  There's also a list of highs and lows for about 30 California cities.

Next to all of that is the weather in North America, with a long list of highs and lows for US cities, and a shorter list of information for world cities.  I think this section exists solely to prove to Angelinos that actual weather does exist elsewhere in the nation and the world.

What's the upshot?  The weather at my house (in the beaches section of town) will be mid-70s all week, with varying small amounts of clouds.

Just like last week.

1.5 or, Drawing the Line

Dear Miriam,

Your body might not be growing very quickly, but your personality certainly is.  You have evidenced a stubborn streak and a temper, which nobody who knows your family is surprised by.  Your father will tell you that it all comes from me, but don't let him fool you.

Your favorite activity right now is drawing.  You draw with crayons.  You draw with pencils.  You draw with markers.  You draw with sidewalk chalk.  You draw on the magnetic doodle pads.  You love to draw.  You started out making lots of straight lines, but you've moved on now to actual scribbles.   You love the sidewalk chalk so much that I started keeping it on a shelf where you could get to it yourself.  Then I discovered that in a place where it never rains, sidewalk chalk never washes away.  After scrubbing the driveway off by hand, I made you start drawing on the part of the sidewalk that gets watered by the sprinklers instead.

You've started wanting to do lots of things for yourself.  You like to dress yourself, or bring us clothes that you want to wear.  You like to put on necklaces--you'll put on a whole handful of bungee cords at one time.  You want to feed yourself, with predictably messy results.  Or, not: one night that we had spaghetti, you grabbed a noodle and tried to put it over your head like a necklace.  That was unpredictably messy.

You have started doing some funny walks.  You walk on your tip toes.  You walk backwards.  You take big, slow, stomping steps, which makes Grandma laugh and laugh.  You are good at going up the stairs now, but you can't seem to decide how you want to go down the stairs.  Sometimes you go backwards, but sometimes you sit down and scoot your butt down one step at a time.

Your hair is straight in the front, but curly in the back.  It makes me wonder what it will be like when you're older and it gets thicker.  I remember my mother and I struggling with my hair when I was a child.  I hope that you and I (and Dad, too) are able to deal with your hair with less pain and aggravation.

Speaking of pain and aggravation, you've had a bunch of teeth come in.  You have four teeth on top, now, but only three on the bottom.  It looks like one of your bottom teeth is stuck behind a tooth that was already there.  I've made you an appointment at a pediatric dentist, so we'll see what they have to say about it.  It doesn't seem to stop you from eating; you still eat all the time.  If you see someone sitting at the table, you want to eat with them.  You'll open up the cupboard where we keep dry and canned goods and bring us the raisins or a granola bar to open for you.  One day, you got a box of crackers open by yourself, and you would take out a cracker and then go sit in the back yard and eat it.  Arrow kept following you, back and forth, from the cupboard to the yard, waiting to see if you'd let him eat one, too.  One day I was watching you eat fried rice and I said to Grandpa, "She doesn't look Chinese, but she eats like she's Chinese!"

We did some fun things this month.  We played at the beach at the Santa Monica Pier.  You were too young for the rides or games, but you had fun chasing the pigeons.  You chased the pigeons at Griffith Park, too, while Corbin had a pony ride.  You did get to go on the train ride there, and the carousel, too.  You weren't too keen on the carousel.  We weren't sure if it was because you didn't like the motion or if the ride was just a little too long.  When we went to San Diego,you seemed to enjoy the zoo, but you really loved the pool at the hotel.  You wore Grandma out wanting to jump in.  You liked it when I swished you around in big circles.  You have always liked to play in water, so it wasn't a big surprise that you liked the pool.  We're definitely going to have to put you in swimming lessons when you get older.

You are trying to say a lot of words these days.  Mostly, you're imitating what we say, which is fine and we can mostly understand it.  But sometimes you'll just come out with a stream of word-like sounding babble, and then we all wonder if we're supposed to have any idea what you meant.  One of the funnier phrases that you've picked up is, "Big eyes," which is what we say when we're making faces at you: "Big eyes," and we open our eyes as wide as we can; "Little eyes," and we squint up our eyes and lower our eyebrows.  Every time you do Little Eyes, it makes us all laugh.  I said once that if we ever have you in a day care or with a baby-sitter, we're going to have to warn them about Little Eyes, otherwise, they'll think you're frowning at them the whole time.

This month has not been an easy month for me.  You will learn as you grow up that I worry about things.  I like to have a predictable life, which I can plan for and which runs smoothly.  I am not good at waiting for other people to do things that affect my life, so the combination of interviewing for jobs plus having our Minneapolis house on the market has not been fun.  But my cousin Sharon gave me a good piece of advice: she told me to enjoy the time home with you and Corbin, which was a good change in perspective.  I do love spending time with you, even when you sit in a puddle and then sit on my lap.

Love,
Mom


You love to draw:

   Fun with a box:

 Curly!

 We look nothing alike:

 A girl and her crackers:

 

 Wearing all the bungee cords, and an extra pair of shorts over your pants (because you wanted to):

 Bubbles with Grandpa:

Remember last month, when I said that you put all of your farm animals in the car carrier semi?

4.6 or, Having Fun Even If It Kills Us

Dear Corbin,

This month, we had this conversation at a restaurant over lunch:
Dad: Corbin, do you want to try my root beer?
You: I'm too young to drink beer!
Me: No, no, it's like a soda.
You: I can't drink soda!

We had this exchange with Grandpa:
You, holding up a Twizzler: Mom, look what Grandpa gave me.
Me, intending to be teasing: Did somebody give you a treat?
You, starting to cry: Grandpa, you're not supposed to give me treats!

One day, you gave Grandpa back a couple of little gummy fruit snacks and said, "I've had enough sugar!"  You might think that this speaks well of your eating habits, but there was also the day that you ate chocolate pudding for afternoon snack, chocolate pudding for dinner, chocolate ice cream for dessert (delayed from lunch time) and then fried rice and yogurt for bed time snack.

We met our science quota for the month: You and Dad went to the Madrona Nature Center for a presentation about raptors, and got to see two hawks and several owls. Aunt Tabetha's birthday was this month, so you and I took her to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the CA Science Center.  We got to do a simulated shuttle ride and we watched the IMAX 3D about the Hubble Telescope.  After that, we tried to do some other parts of the Science Center, but you discovered the room about water and rivers and after that all you wanted to do was play with the water exhibits.  We'll have to do the rest some other time.

We met our sight-seeing quota for the month: We went to the Flower District one Saturday morning, to see the original Los Angeles Flower Market, which was opened in 1921.  They had some pretty standard selections, but they also had a huge display of beautiful orchids.  I bought a Hawaiian volcano plant, which is an anthurium growing on a piece of volcanic rock.  It's pretty cool.  Anthuriums were the flower that your Grandma Lam carried in her wedding, so it's kind of sentimental to have one in the house.

We went to the Santa Monica Pier one day.  I thought it would be sight-seeing, but it's actually an amusement park.  So you rode the child-sized bumper cars and we went on the Ferris wheel together.  Then we went down off the pier and played on the beach a little while.

We also went to Griffith Park.  We thought we'd go to the zoo, but it was much too hot and too expensive.  We decided that we would wait until October or November, and go for either Dad's or Grandpa's birthday.  We did ride the little park train twice, and the carousel twice.  You even got to have your first pony ride.  You were old enough to choose between a slow ride, at a walk, or a medium ride, at a trot.  We watched some other kids on the ponies, and you decided on the medium ride.  Grandma was watching from the side and she didn't know that you had chosen the faster ride.  When your pony started trotting away with you, she thought you were in trouble!  Even though it was a bouncy ride, you thought it was a lot of fun.

We even met our quota for traveling this month: We went down to San Diego for a few days to go to that zoo and visit Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena.  The San Diego zoo is pretty great--we got to see the pandas and some awesome big cats.  It's too big to do in one morning, and it's built in the hills, so that one morning was totally exhausting.  Plus, we all stayed in one hotel room, so nobody got any sleep.  We came home the next day, instead of staying and going to the aquarium at Scripps.

And after that month, we were all tired out.  Good thing it's the start of the school year and we can only do things on the weekends.

Love,
Mom


Listening to the newest Beats headphones:

 Santa Monica Pier:

 Madrona Nature Center:

 CA Science Center:

 Griffith Park:

 San Diego Zoo: