3.9 or, Thanks I'm Giving

Dear Corbin,

We have many things to be thankful for this year.

I'm thankful that your Grandpa Lam had another birthday.  He just turned 77, which we celebrated on Thanksgiving Day with cupcakes.  You and Grandma put candles in them, a big number 7 and then seven individual candles.  Then you had fun blowing them out.  Dad said, "Someday you're going to go to a birthday party and wonder why someone else is blowing out the candles."  I'm so grateful that your Grandpa is part of our lives.  Grandma would tell you that I was always a Daddy's Girl growing up, and it's true that he and I have always been close.  We're alike in many ways, which will tell you who you can complain about when I drive you crazy.


I'm thankful that we live close to a really great Children's Hospital, which we ended up visiting because it turns out you're allergic to penicillin.  You had been on amoxicillin for over a week now, treating that sinus infection.  Sunday morning, you woke up with spots all over your body.  We called the nurse line and they recommended an ER visit because you thought that your tongue felt swollen.  So we got to spend about 90 minutes in the ER making sure that you weren't having too bad of a reaction, which you weren't, thank goodness.  The real fun will be going back to the clinic in a few days to see if you need to be on a different antibiotic.  We've seen more doctors in the past three months than in your first three years.  I'm thankful that we have health insurance!

I'm thankful that we have a safe house to live in, and food to eat, and cars that run, and jobs that pay for all of those things.

I'm thankful that the 2012 elections are over, and I'm thankful that President Obama was re-elected.  You can say many things about the US political system, but I am so grateful to live in a nation that holds peaceful, regular elections.  This particular election pointed up many problems, from long waits at polling places to the fact that money has far too much influence.  I think the biggest problem has been growing for a long time: the effect of the 24-hour news cycle.  I think it's obvious, if you watch any amount of news, that instead of contributing to an informed electorate, it instead contributes to partisan hysteria.  News has become entertainment and opinions have become news, neither of which is really useful, and it's also led to a terrible drop in journalistic standards.  Good journalism takes time.  Good journalism is non-partisan, but not non-confrontational.  I hope that when you are old enough to vote, it will be easier to get good information about the people and issues that you will be voting on, but if it's not, I hope that you will do the work to make sure you understand them.  And I hope that you'll recognize that while no system is ever perfect, we are blessed to live in a country that has the imperfect system that we do.

And mostly, I'm thankful for our lives together as a family.  You keep us challenged with your constant questions.  You keep us entertained with your humor.  You keep us exhausted with your energy.  You keep us learning as we try to satisfy your curiosity.  You keep us present and mindful in a way that nothing else could.  I'm so thankful that you came to be our son.

Love,
Mom

 Building Grandpa's birthday Lego set:

 Holiday card pictures:

 Chipmunk Boy:

 With Grandma on Thanksgiving:

Dad and kiddos:

Your new hoodie for this fall:

 Rawr!

Month 7 or, Up to 11

Dear Miriam,

We don't know entirely why, but this month you got loud.  You're loud when you're happy and playing.  You're loud when you're unhappy and crying.  You're loud when you're tired.  You're even loud when you're sleeping.  Several times I've gotten up at night thinking you wanted to nurse and found you still asleep, making noise.  Even when you're not shouting, you're smacking things with your hands.  We've gotten you playing with the turtle drum so you can even make more noise.

You're crawling quite well now.  You'll follow us from room to room (complaining that we won't just pick you up) and you're Miriam-on-the-spot when someone's playing with something or handling something that you think looks interesting.  Corbin's started using the phrase, "She's messing with my stuff!" which I will probably hear for the next million years.

You're still pulling up on everything, including us.  The other day you trapped me in the kitchen, in between the stove and the sink, by attaching yourself to my legs.  You've also almost managed to crawl up onto my back when I'm sitting on the floor.  You've gained weight, too, of course, which is a constant reminder that I need to get back to lifting weights.

We keep expecting to see a tooth poking through.  You chew on everything and drool like a constant small waterfall.  Sometimes I can't tell the difference between you've drooled all over yourself and you've spilled the dog's water dish all over yourself.

I've been trying to make some good fall food for you: acorn and butternut squashes, sweet potatoes, applesauce.  You seem to like things when they're added to your oatmeal cereal, but you're not too sure about them on their own.  I wish I had more time to cook in general.  I hate to think that you and your brother will end up in conversations with your college friends that go, "What do you mean, you've never eaten fish?!"  And then you'll have to tell them that your mother fed you the same 7 meals your entire life and that's why you keep asking them what their plans are for Christmas break.

Love,
Mom

PS: Sorry for the lack of photos this month, sweetheart.  Think of it as quality over quantity.

3.8 or, Plague House Revisited

Dear Corbin,

You started school, and we all got the plague.  You ended up with an eye infection and a nose infection, thanks to a general cold.  Getting those eye drops into your eyes was absolutely awful for the first three days.  Then one night, Dad wasn't done putting Miriam to bed yet, so you and I talked about it and you agreed to lay still while I put the eye drops in.  It was one of those weird moments, that feels almost like a breakthrough in parent-child communications where I manage to say just the right thing and you understand it. I think most of the success came from something that I'm trying to change in how I communicate with you.

I had a conversation with your teacher in which she mentioned that the best time to teach appropriate behavior is when everything is calm.  Which made perfect sense to me once I thought about it a little bit.  Of course it's not the right time to discuss your behavior when you're already upset.  So simple, and yet so profound.  So when I realized that Dad was still going to be with Miriam when we were ready for eye drops, I didn't wait until you were already fighting me to try and get you to cooperate.  Which apparently was the right decision, because it worked like a charm.

Your teacher also compared it to practicing at something until it's in your muscle memory, which also makes a lot of sense to me.  I've been thinking of ways that I can program good behavior into you.  I was confronted with a brilliant example of it the other day.  I didn't hear something that you said, so I asked you, "What are you talking about?" to which you replied, "I'm just talking about Shaft."

What with all of the sickness, we didn't do much this past month.  You did spend a couple of days in Madison with Grandma and Grandpa Lam.  You came home with yet another digger--a cool little metal bobcat.  We christened it the other day playing in the mud in the backyard.  Then you dug a hole, plopped yourself down in it, and told me you were hatching eggs.  You got yourself so dirty we had to change your pants before we went to breakfast.  I call that a good morning.

Love,
Mom


You sending email:

Playing in the hole, day one:

 Playing in the hole, day two:

Month 6 or, Happy Half Birthday

Dear Miriam,

You are half a year old!  You are definitely crawling now, but it took you a while to figure out how to go forward.  You would go sideways or backwards, which meant that you would crawl in a circle backwards.  It was pretty funny.  You are pretty much sitting up on your own, too, although sometimes it looks more like you're kind of perching on one hip.  One day, I put you in the Bumbo chair with a bead maze next to you, thinking that would keep you happy for a while.  Then I heard a thud and a rattle and found you'd crawled out of the chair and fallen on the maze.  Guess that Bumbo recall really does make sense.

I don't know how it happened, but you've established your own bedtime routine.  I had been thinking that we would need to do a lot of work to get you on a good schedule, but all of a sudden you're in the bath around 7:15pm and asleep around 8pm.  You're still up a couple of times at night to nurse and get re-settled, so I think we might still need to do some sleep training around that.  But I'm really happy that your bedtime has become pretty regular.  Although, I did tell Dad the other night that unless we want you to grow up illiterate, we'd better start reading to you at bedtime, too.


Hurricane Miriam was a category 2 hurricane in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California.  It's too bad that you're not old enough for us to get real mileage out of the fact that there was a hurricane with your name on it at the same time you discovered that you could crawl over and chew on the cords for Dad's Playstation.

Aunt Cele (or Grandma Cele, as her grandkids call her) came over to visit us and some other friends.  She brought a rocking chair for your room, which is giant improvement over the folding chair that we had in there.  It's much, much nicer this way.  Now I just have to worry about my entire body falling asleep, instead of just my butt.

We've started you on some rice cereal last month, but then there was a whole news report that rice can be a source of arsenic.  Ugh.  So when we ran out, I wrote down "oatmeal cereal" on the grocery list and sent Dad off to the grocery store.  He came home with oatmeal and cereal.  Which made me laugh.  You're still getting the hang of eating, and I'm still trying to get you to like bananas.

And then, the reason I'm so late posting this for you, we all go sick.  Corbin got really sick, with bad fevers and infections in his nose and eyes.  Dad got the least sick, with just a day of feeling stuffy.  I had a day of fever in the middle of a week or so of stuffed up head and a very sore throat.  You are really stuffed up, which wouldn't be so bad, but you can't sleep unless you are mostly upright.  So one night you slept on me, which meant you slept, but I did not.  The last couple of nights, you've been sleeping in your bathtub, in your crib, so that you're sitting up instead of laying down.  It certainly looks odd, but it's been working.

I realized I haven't told you very much about how you act lately.  You're a happy baby, you smile at us and laugh with us.  Sometimes you're okay playing on your own for a little while, but mostly you want to be with us.  When I get home from work, any time I walk away from you, you start fussing.  It's not because you're hungry, you just want to hang out with me.  Right now your high chair is across the table from Dad's chair, and he thinks it's funny to get you laughing just when I'm trying to feed you.  And, oh boy, do you like being around Corbin.  You're already a menace to whatever he's playing with, because all you want to do is crawl over and play with him.  Yesterday he was crying when we put his eye drops in, and you watched for a minute and then started crying with him.  It was almost as cute as when I come in your room in the morning and you give me the first smile of the day.  That's a pretty good way to start my morning.

Love,
Mom


You still have blue eyes:

 What your room looked like before I hung the painting over your dresser:

Helping Dad fix some headphones:

3.7 or, Sad Tummy Blues

Dear Corbin,

We were having a lovely month, and then there was the vomiting.

We went to Madison for Labor Day weekend, and the Thornes and Spencers met us there for a visit.  We spent an afternoon playing on the playground at my old elementary school, and that evening having dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Lam's house.  The next day, we all went swimming at the hotel.  And by all, I mean people other than you and me.  I had forgotten my swimming suit (after reminding Dad to bring his) and you decided you didn't really want to go into the pool.  You really liked standing on the edge and shooting squirt guns at people.  It was fun watching you play with your cousin Charlotte, at the playground and at the house.  You managed to share your toys with only a few moments of disagreement.  I'm always happy when we can get you some cousin time, even when it's only for a short visit.

Your regular preschool classes started.  It doesn't seem to be totally smooth yet.  There are some kids who haven't quite settled into the groove yet, and you've had some frustrating moments with them.  I spoke with your teacher about it, and she had been encouraging you to play with some of the other students who are better behaved.  It's another month until parent conferences, so hopefully by then the class will have calmed down and become more enjoyable.

We had gotten back into a pretty good routine, but this week you got sick.  It's our first experience with you having a stomach bug, and all of us are a little traumatized.  It started Tuesday morning at 3am, which meant I didn't really get any sleep the rest of the night.  Dad cleaned up you and your crib while I nursed Miriam back to sleep.  Then I laid in your room on the twin bed.  You woke up every so often to be sick again, which was awful.  I came home early from work that afternoon, and we managed to get a good nap in during the late afternoon.  Then you felt better, and I let you eat way too much for dinner.  It didn't all stay down, but then you weren't sick the rest of the night, so we all actually got some sleep that night.

It's hard watching you be sick.  There isn't a lot that we can do for you, in terms of medication, and you're not able to really think logically about how to make yourself feel better.  So we end up just trying to steer you into activities like reading new library books and sitting on the couch watching things on TV.  I had brought home some books about planets and asteroids, and then we watched National Geographic's Asteroid: Deadly Impact, which has some pretty amusing footage from the 1990's.  I hope that eventually you are a person who is good at taking care of yourself, and not just when you're sick.  I hope you value your body and your health, and that you're able to enjoy both.  At least, until you start taking kung fu lessons with your Dad.  Don't worry; we've got lots of ice packs.

Love,
Mom


In the pool with Dad:

 Cousins who can't sit still:

 Fancy hair:

Cleaning fish stuff with Dad:

Month 5 or, You're Longer Than This Post

Dear Miriam,

You are five months old already.  It's hard to believe until I try to pick you up and realize how much bigger you are now.  You're good at rolling over, and you're working hard to get your legs in the right places to start crawling.  I'm guessing it won't be very long until you're really moving yourself around.  It's been a while since we played the game Chase the Baby, and this time we'll have a toddler playing, too.  Ready, set, where'd she go?

This month, we gave you rice cereal for the first time.  You had been looking interested in our food for a while, but your staring had gotten downright accusatory.  You even started making angry noises at us, so we figured we'd better see if you were interested in the solids.  You're very enthusiastic about it, but still terribly messy, of course.  You don't really know what to do with your tongue yet and it doesn't really help that you try to suck on your toes at the same time.

You're gaining a bedroom this month!  Dad decided a while ago that we should move the office down to the basement so that you can have your own room.  This is good on many levels.  It means that Dad got rid of a bunch of stuff in the basement.  It means we'll get rid of a bunch of stuff in the office.  It means the office got a good cleaning.  And hopefully it'll mean that you'll start having a better bedtime routine and sleeping better.  At least, it will mean that I can ignore you more.  Which is my goal, really, to ignore my kids as much as possible.  So far, it's not going so well.

You still have blue eyes.

Love,
Mom

Month 3.6 or, Lazy Hazy Crazy Days

Dear Corbin,

We've had a fun month, but you'll just have to take my word for it, because we can't seem to take our camera with us anywhere.

We went to a birthday party for our friend Adrian.  You spent a long time playing with his Matchbox cars, until you found out that there was cake going around.  It was the first party that we've been at where there was a pinata, which you managed to smack a couple of times with the stick.  It was a good sturdy pinata, which is great until you actually want the thing to break.  Cindy ended up beating it to death on the ground, and then a couple of other adults had to help get all of the candy and toys out of it.  You came away with a little plastic pirate guy (it was a pirate themed pinata), a sheet of stickers and a Tigger Pez dispenser.  Every couple of days since then you'll ask for, "some of that Tigger candy," and I let you  put one or two candies in and then eat them.

Speaking of pirates, we went to the Science Museum to see the Pirates exhibit.  It was based on a true story of a ship that was taken by pirates and then sunk in a storm off of Cape Cod.  They had a lot of artifacts, including lots of treasure.  They also had several exhibits about how they recovered artifacts.  Your favorite part seemed to be a video of watching the ship go down in a storm, followed by the model of part of the ship that we could walk through.  You were disappointed that there weren't real pirates, though.

We also went to the Firefighter's Hall and Museum.  My friend Jody met us there with her two kids.  The three of you had fun playing with their train table and sliding down a fire pole.  We all went for a ride on their firetruck, which was very loud and very bouncy.  The most popular thing, though, was being able to squirt water at a board painted to be a house on fire.  You're always happy to be squirting water at something.  Your version of playing in the sprinkler is holding on to it and making it spray on a dirt patch in the yard so you can play in the mud.

Summer session of pre-school ended.  You haven't seemed to miss it when you've had time off.  I'm not sure if that's because you're not socially invested in other kids yet or if you actually don't care.  You do talk about other kids, but not in a very meaningful way.  I wonder if that will change over the course of the next year.

Your accomplishment this month is that you can sing the whole alphabet song.  So now I need to start teaching you to sign along with it.  Then, eventually, you and I can say things to each other and your Dad won't know what we're talking about. 

Love,
Mom


A study in Corbin:

Month 4, or The Long and Short of It

Dear Miriam,

You are four months old, which I totally forgot when I packed for our camping trip.  I was very good about packing pants and socks for you, in case it was colder up north.  And it was, so I thought we were doing fine.  Until I actually tried to dress you in pants and socks and realized that they were all too small for you.  So you spent a couple of days in your pajamas until we got back to the Cottage and it was warm enough for just a shirt again.  The only reason you minded was because you couldn't suck on your toes.

Everyone loved holding you and talking to you, and if I wasn't careful it was easy to lose track of who had wandered off with you.  Aunt Alice tried to use you as reason why her son and his wife should have a baby sooner rather than later; it's not your fault that it didn't work.  We were all speculating on who might be the next baby to come camping, but I think you'll likely be the youngest kid for at least another year.

You are talking a lot now, and starting to get the hang of conversational pauses.  You still do funny little yells sometimes, which always make me laugh.  You complain especially loud when I lay you down and the move out of your line of sight.  These are the sweet days when you actually want your parents to be around you.  We have to savor this time, the time before the teenage years when you'll have those days that you wish you were an orphan.

You're starting on some teething pain, I think, since you spend most of your time now chewing on whatever you can get into your mouth.  It was my finger, most of the time that we were driving to and from the UP, and your little gums felt pretty hard.  So we've got orajel back in the house, and I've got to spend some time finding the teething rings before you chew my finger off.

On a more serious note, I've been feeling intimidated by you lately.  Or rather, not by you, but by raising a girl.  I have been hearing a lot lately about women being treated badly--in video game culture, and in comic book culture, and at various conventions.  There's been controversy around the appearance of a Black female athlete in the Olympics, which is so discouraging when we should simply be celebrating her talent and hard work.  The political arena is still full of people who think that they should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body and your career and your life.  It's hard to think that you'll have to face that in your life, and that I can only prepare you and not shield you forever.  I hope that you will not live your life according to someone else and their ideas of how you should be.  I hope that you are smart enough to believe in yourself, and to protect yourself from that trap.  Gather those people around you who help you see yourself clearly, in all of your beauty and all of your flaws.  A friend who sees both and loves you for both is a true friend.  Or a parent, one of the two.

Love,
Mom

 Waiting for the new tire on the camper:

With Grandpa Lam at the Cottage:

 Fun with Alligator in the car: