mumblings

Ada loves to "talk". She is even getting better at pronouncing words in a way that resembles English words, which she is very proud of. Sometimes we will be sitting around playing and out of nowhere she will shout, "Yellow!" or "Lellow" as she says it. She has some favorite words that she practices all the time, and then she has words that she says perfectly the first time. One night as I was handing her a bag of apple Fruity Snapz for the ride home I said, "Ok, here are your apples." And she replied right back with, "Apples!" - clear as day.

When she isn't surprising us with new words or practicing old words, she is practicing her conversation cadence. She has been doing this for a long time, but now she uses hand motion and pauses for answers. I think she might think we understand her, because we respond in the appropriate places, but really, we don't. Usually this mumbling happens during the day, when she is awake, and is trying to tell us about her day; but the other night she started while she was in the middle of sleeping. We were in our room watching TV and we heard Ada's voice. Not unusual, only this time it was not a screaming screetching voice, it was her soft, gentle, conversation voice. She was going through her litany of words, practicing her conversations, and probably, telling us to "turn the damn TV down, someone is trying to sleep!"

sickos

We have been sick in our house since Saturday. Well, I've been sick since Saturday, Elliot and Ada just started to get sick yesterday. It has been interesting to see how illness ravages through our family in very different ways. When I get an illness it creeps through my system, effecting me in small ways but taking FOREVER. For Elliot, sickness races through his system in a firey rage, causing him to sweat through his clothes, blankets, and skin - but is usually gone as fast as it comes on. Ada, fittingly, is a combination of the two. She gets a fever, but a mild one. And her symptoms come on in a controlled but swift pace, stick around long enough to be a bother and then calmly exit stage left. This illness has been particularly bad for Ada in that it has lasted more than one day, and her fever has yet to break. I have mentioned before how Ada gets much more cuddly when she is sick, and that is true this time around, although it is also accompanied by an urge to be in charge. So we spent last night and this morning trying our best to comfort Ada, all while she spent every ounce of energy she had snuggling into our sides, grabbing our hands and wrapping them around her settling in, and then moving our hands, settling in, over and over again. I'm about to go home and I half expect to walk in the door to find Elliot in the form of a cocoon with Ada happily sitting in the middle surrounded entirely by her Daddy cocoon, playing with her favorite toys, and slowly sweating out her sickness.

to whom it may concern, my parents are crazy

Elliot and I are both training for marathons. Elliot for LA in hopes of qualifying for Boston, and me for Boston, thanks to a sponsor bid from HP. This means that we need to exercise (mostly run) 6 days a week. Most of the time we are good about hitting that goal but last weekend we ran a half marathon and had Monday off of work and were just feeling generally lazy, so we took Tuesday night off, swearing to each other that we'd get up early on Wednesday to run. Well the alarm went off and we tried really hard to get out of bed, but that didn't happen so we were stuck with running after work. There is no way either of us can afford to take three days off in a row, we have a mutual pact to guilt each other into a run if we have to, and that is what it took last night. When we run at night we try to time it so that Ada has already had dinner, had some fun playing time, and is starting to wind down for the night. Most of the time this works out and Ada falls asleep in the jogging stroller. Well last night as I was driving home it started to sprinkle. Not so bad, I thought, we have a rain shield for the jogger, Ada will be fine. Then as Ada was eating dinner the rain picked up to a nice steady patter on our roof. Ok, we thought, this will pass while Ada eats and plays and we should be good to go after that. And then it got worse, and worse, and worse. We finally decided that we had to get on the road no matter what the weather was like. So we slowly piled on the clothes and prepped the stroller, hoping against hope that the rain would stop. Not really for our sake, but we weren't sure how the rain cover would work and we really didn't want Ada to get soaked. Eventually we had a VERY sleepy Ada loaded into the jogger, the rain cover attached and secured, and we headed out into the storm. We were completely soaked by the time we hit the first corner, but Ada seemed to be holding up Ok so we continued. All told we got in a soggy three miles. We ran through ankle deep puddles, through spats of VERY heavy rain, and through it all, Ada remained bone dry. She didn't really fall asleep as planned, though. She found the rain and the sight of Elliot and I soaked through and through to be just way to funny. I'm guessing we didn't do much in the way of deterring Ada from her new found love of puddles, but it was worth every ounce of water I soaked in when Ada and I exchanged smooshy faces through her rain shield as we made the turn to come home.

nomad

Elliot and I have always led pretty active lives, so when Ada came into the picture we decided that instead of slowing down our family life we'd just have to figure out how to incorporate our new addition into it. Our goal from the beginning was to get Ada to the point where she had a rough routine for each day (eating, napping, playing, etc.), but that she just did whatever part of her routine was up wherever she happened to be at the time. That was before she actually arrived. Once she showed up and started to exert her dominance I had doubts that it would actually work that way, but in a testament to Ada's adaptability, and of course some small amount of Chinese water torture, we are at our ideal state about 99% of the time.

This past weekend was a perfect example. Elliot and I had a random assortment of activities which required babysitting. Ada happily hung out with Auntie Katie Michelmore on Saturday, having a wonderful girls morning at Starbucks and then the park. Sunday morning when Elliot and I were off running a half marathon, Ada spent some time over at Grampa's house and even managed to get in a nice long morning nap in Taylor's crib, and then proceeded to act as if she owned the joint while we hung out to watch football. And finally, she had a date with our friend Derek on Sunday night during our ice hockey game. They spent some time watching our friends play floor hockey and then went to Chili's to hang with the cool crowd. When we showed up to join them, Ada was happily sitting at the table with the whole floor hockey crew, swapping war stories and stealing french fries. All in all, she napped when she needed to nap, she ate when she needed to eat, and the only time she cried was the 10 seconds between when we said good bye to her and when the door shut behind us. She likes to make us feel like she is going to miss us, but really she has a social schedule to keep and we just slow her down.

best snack ever

The last time we were at Costco one of the vendors passing out samples was Mrs. Mays Fruity Snapz. Basically freeze dried fruit chunks. We took a sample and tasted it and since Ada now wants to eat whatever we are eating she insisted on trying them as well. When you hear freeze dried fruit you tend to think about dried fruit chips, somewhat tasty but also sort of, well, dried out. But one bite of the Fruity Snapz will change your mind forever. Ada gobbled up her little sample and then started rotating between the 'eat', 'more', and 'please' signs as fast as she could. Well that kind of enthusiasm for any food that doesn't include chocolate will always result in immediate purchase. I thought, well, it has fruit in it so exactly how bad could it be. I was guessing they fell pretty close to the fruit leather category, but it turns out they are even better. They are just fruit! Nothing else. A parent's dream.

Ada has an acute awareness of what the Fruity Snapz box and packaging look like and whenever she sees either of them she does her crazy 'eat', 'more', and 'please' sign rotation. A sure sign of a snack that falls into the "Baby Crack" category. Ada would clean her room, vacuum the house, and wash all the windows for one package for Apple Snapz. Lucky for her we aren't that demanding. Instead we let her have one package of Snapz a day, after we pick her up from day care and after she is strapped in her car seat. She anticipates this time all day long. She always sees me trying to sneak the pack into her food bag and starts her crazy signing routine, so we tell her, "After school, we'll give you your Snapz after we pick you up from school." And that seems to make sense to her. But of course, when we pick her up from school she remembers and starts to get more and more excited the closer we get to her car seat. Every so often she will even say "Dank do (Thank you)" without being prompted after she receives her Snapz, which is a mother's dream. And to think, I only had to resort to bribing a 1.5 year old with a completely healthy baby crack snack.

because it has been way to long...

Here is a picture of Ada from Mt. Baker (thanks Auntie Julie).

whoa

When Ada was younger and smaller and just starting to learn how to stand up she was fairly daring with her new found skill. We would put her up on the couch or the counter or the ottoman and when she would precariously pull herself up and wobble around while trying to maintain her balance, I often helped to narrate the process by saying, "Whhhoooaaa". This ended up being one of the first sounds that Ada repeated back to me, which I found sort of funny, so I continued to use Whoa when appropriate. Well now that Ada is in full fledged trying to speak mode she has adopted Whoa as her all time favorite. Sometimes she uses it correctly, but mostly she uses it to describe very mundane activities. She opens the door to the bathroom "Whoa", she sits down on her bedroom floor "Whoa", she takes a bite of pasta "Whoa", she puts her shoes away "Whoa", and on and on. In fact she will get into Whoa ruts where she will use it as an ending to every minute activity she does in a span of two minutes. Pretty funny from an observer level but it got me thinking. Is this going to be Ada's version of "You know" or "Eh"? Some strange twisted combination of the dialectical space fillers from Elliot's and my home towns. All I can say to that, is, "Whoa".

*edited for proper spelling of Candianism

lesson learned

Ada loves stairs. We don't have any at home so whenever she finds stairs she climbs up as fast as possible. Over Christmas, while we were traveling she loved airports simply because there were lots of stairs, and moving stairs (escalators) which are just about the coolest thing ever.

So last night when we went to Eric and Monique's house for our Monday dinner, Ada walked in, saw the stairs and wanted up. Elliot followed her up and after I had done some dinner prep I joined them as Ada watched Maia tear through her dress up clothes for something for Ada to wear. Turns out Ada wasn't so much into putting on the dress up clothes and when it became apparent that we had that in mind she bolted to the stairs and started her descent.

We have tried several times to teach Ada to go down stairs backwards. She knows how, but then she sees older kids and adults going down them facing forward and she has determined that she will just skip that little kid process of carefully descending down stairs. She is however smart enough to know that she can't do that all alone, so she will grab one our hands and have us guide her down the stairs.

Back to last night - as she was guiding me down the stairs she took one step slightly before I did and her grasp slipped off my finger and sending her for a tumble. Probably one of the worst things you can see as a parent is your baby tumbling down the stairs. Lucky for me Ada has some size to her and her tumble was only a few stairs. She wasn't hurt - more startled than anything. Of course after I picked her up and comforted her she pointed up the stairs indicating the she wanted right back up on the horse that dumped her. So I carried her up the stairs, and then put her down near the top, this time indicating that she should go down backwards. She was already there with me and went down the entire flight of stairs the proper way for anyone under the age of 2. Turns out Ada knew all along that the safe way to go down stairs was backwards, she was just displaying her Independence and will - until it backfired on her. Makes me wonder what else she is holding out on. I'm guessing she has the nutritional information of cookies vs. broccoli laid out but is just looking for the theoretical "tumble down the stairs" to prove to her that she should go the healthier route.

chicken dance elmo

Ada received a chicken dance elmo (CDE) from Eric, Monique, Maia and Eric for Christmas. Now, Ada loves Elmo. There is an Elmo at her daycare that sings the alphabet when you hug it, and this is sometimes the only reason why Ada does not melt down when we leave the room. So when she opened up the CDE, I thought, wonderful - she LOVES Elmo. I think the chicken suit on the Elmo threw her for a little bit of a loop. Either that or she just had so many other toys that it took her awhile to remember that she had received the CDE. Whatever the case, she has recently taken to playing with her new CDE. Like most toys, she isn't obsessive about playing with Elmo all the time, but she will occasionally pull it out and has even figured out how to get Elmo to dance and sing. I even tried to hide the CDE among all of her other mounds and mounds of toys, but when she decided she wanted to play with CDE she spied him peaking out behind Lily the singing frog.


So the other morning, as Elliot and I were trying to recover from waking up at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning, Ada decides that that moment is THE moment she needs to start playing with CDE. Anyone who has ever seen CDE knows that probably the last thing a mom or dad want to hear on minutes of sleep is "Elmo wants to be a chicken, Elmo wants to be a duck. Quack Quack Quack Quack" over and over again. So as Ada dug through her massive pile of toys we could feel each other hoping that she would miss the bright yellow chicken suit up against the bright red Elmo fur. Alas, we were not that lucky. So the next thought through both of our minds was, please don't let this be the moment that Ada suddenly turns into an Elmo drone. So we watched. Ada pulled out CDE. She gently set him down. She carefully sat herself down in front of CDE and carefully looked him over. And then she reached out and touched the button on CDE's foot that starts the lovely chicken dance melody. You could see Elliot's and my chests puff out as we collectively held our breath hoping against hope that she would not reach out and push that button again. And at that moment, Ada sat there, looked CDE over, shrugged her shoulders, pointed her finger at CDE and let out a a sardonic "Hammmpp". And that was it. She saw the humor in CDE and his little song, but only needed to hear it once. And she was off to run her fingernails down the nearest chalkboard.

welcome back

This is my third attempt to write a new blog to kick off 2008 and if the first few weeks of the year are any indication - we are in for one long long year. Not all bad, just very busy. Ada getting older does not help with the equation, because as she gets older she actually notices when we aren't paying attention to her, and, well, that is just NOT acceptable.

Unfortunately, I have been traveling all week so I only have one fresh story to tell. When I called home last night Ada was still awake and as she has been thrilled to have Daddy all to herself, when he was occupied with the phone she was insisting on dragging him all over the house, squawking away and insisting on his undivided attention. Of course as her Mom I was trying to figure out ways to resolve her anger while at the same time trying to form some sort of bond with her over the phone, so I turned to my latest cure all, singing "The farmer and the Del". Apparently, she recognized my off key voice and stopped nagging Elliot, stopped squawking, and stopped trying to distract him from our conversation. Instead she started dancing, bopping her upper body back and forth, clapping and just generally taking in the song. This of course made me not feel so bad about missing her all week and felt like I was actually able to have one moment of bonding, however short.

Of course this is all dependant on Elliot's account of the story. For all I know she grew bored of us both and wandered off to her room to throw sock balls at herself, but for my sanity I'm going to go with the happy bopping version.