recovery

What a week here in San Diego. Luckily our neighborhood was not evacuated and our house never came in harms way, but it was still a crazy week for us. Both my office and Ada's daycare was shut down for the week so we had a lot quality time together. Unfortunately, I still had to do work and the air was so poor that we stayed inside all day.

We did manage to have some fun throughout the week and it was neat watching Ada progress, learning something new each day. She did get a little sick of hanging out inside with Mom and Dad all day. By Wednesday she was walking up to our sliding glass door and banging her little fists against the glass. As if to say, please, please, please let me out. I won't eat any leaves, or grass - I just want to feel the cool breeze of freedom on my little cheeks. We gave in on Thursday after a day of almost constant banging.

rules

Ada received lots and lots of cool stuff for her birthday. One of these presents, from her Nonna Donna, is a little plastic baby sized car. It has a door that opens and wheels that work, and a steering wheel - with a HORN. Very cool. And up until last weekend Ada was terrified of it. Curious, but terrified. She would deign to sit in it if we were pushing her around, but she did not want to be left alone with the car. This was funny to Elliot and I because she could not be removed from a very similar car at her cousin Erica's house. We figured she would eventually warm up to the car so we left in in our living room and whenever Ada would catch sight of the car out of the corner of her eye you could see a little shiver go up her spine and she'd hug into us a little closer.

Last weekend Ada's Nana, my mom, came over to babysit and noticed the car. I told her about how it was Ada's birthday present but that she hadn't quite warmed up to it. I guess Nana took that as a challenge because by the time we got home from our hockey game, Ada didn't just like her car, she LOVED it. She can push herself backwards, and then will squawk until someone moves her forward. She loves getting into and out of the car through the door, and she is even polite enough to close the car door after she gets out. This is a wonderful development and I will always wonder how many M&M's Nana had to give her to get her to like the car so much. :)

But all of this love has come with a devilish side. Once Ada has seen her car, she has to be in it, the.rest.of.the.night. This has caused us to create the first real behavioral rule in our house. Ada has to have her dinner before she is allowed to play with her car, otherwise she won't eat dinner. We tried to use the car to our advantage and let her eat her dinner there, thinking that she might not notice that she is eating actual food, but Ada is apparently already one of those crazy car nuts who have a rule about eating in their car. When I offered her some of her veggie corn dog while she was cruising in her car the other night, she looked at me with a look that said, "Um, no. That thing is not allowed in this car. The crumbs alone will take weeks to clean up, and don't even get me started on the smell."

shoes

I've mentioned Ada's love of shoes before, and I take full blame for her obsession. There was a few weeks where I couldn't pass a pair of miniature shoes without picking them up and cooing to Elliot about how cute they were and that Ada HAD to have them. So our 14 month old has, I think, seven pairs of shoes. This might explain why Ada cannot pass a pair of shoes, big or small, without succumbing to the urge to put that shoe on. We spent most of Ada's bedtime play time last night putting on a pair of shoes just handed down to her from her cousin Maia. They are 3 sizes to big but that didn't stop Ada - on and off, on and off, on and off. I'm hoping this obsession with shoes will lead to her being able to dress herself soon. But I'm guessing it will probably just lead to more obstacles for us to dodge in the hallway, in her room, and around her crib. And, really, I have only myself to blame.

entertainment

Car rides with Ada have become an interesting endeavour. Long gone are the days where she just sat in the back and quietly took in the sights of our drive. These days she wants constant stimulation, especially in the car, because car rides are so boring - all you do is sit there and watch the road pass by. I try to provide her with a range of toys to play with and that usually works for part of the ride, but it always comes down to the one ace in the hole trick - singing and clapping. Ada LOVES it when we sing, and loves it even more when we clap and sing. She will bop her head back and forth and clap along. She doesn't care what we are singing about, as long as it comes with a "clap, clap, clappity, clap" she is happy. The other night on the way to my brother's house she got particularly into the clapping and head bopping and ended up so excited that she didn't know what to do and just whirled her arms back and forth and up and down so fast it looked like there was a little ball made out of baby arms spinning around in front of her. She finished this flourish with a loud squawk and then a string of babble with good conversation cadence to it. Like she wanted to tell me about how much fun she was having. Most of the time, I feel like my sole purpose in life these days is to entertain Ada as she makes her way through life, but every once in a while, something like this happens, and I realize that we share the job of Chief Entertainment Officer in our house - I just run more meetings than she does.

role model

Ada loves Monday nights. Every Monday night we go up to my brother's house and Ada gets to play with her cousins. Well mostly she watches her cousins play but more and more she is starting to get in on the action.

Last night there was a lot of commotion, running around, and just general chaotic kid fun. Ada was in hog heaven. I think her favorite part of the night was following her cousin Eric around and immitating everything he did. There is only a four month age gap between the two of them and that makes them perfect playmates because they are interested in the same stuff. However, in the world of balance and coordination those four months are pretty significant, and Eric seems especially balanced and coordinated for a little guy. So watching Ada try to do everything her cousin is doing can give me a little bit of a heart attack. Lucky for me Eric seems to know he is the older more responsible cousin. I think he knows that he needs to be careful of Ada while she is tagging along. Last night, even in the midst of the chaos, when Eric saw Ada trying to climb into the same chair as he had just climbed in- he calmed down, sat back, and watched - silently cheering her on - until she finally made it into the chair and then, she sat on him.

my favorite things

Well not all of them, but I've been reminding myself of a couple of my favorite Ada things lately due to her recent bouts of Independence.

Ada has an infectious smile. She smiles with her whole body. You can see it forming in her belly and just bursting out to her toes and fingers and her face. She is so generous with her smiles, I usually have to just make a silly face and she bestows one on me.

Ada's real laugh. She has become a great fake laugher, but on the rare occasions when she lets out a real one - watch out. Like her smile it encompasses her full body and it looks like she might actually explode if she lets it go on any longer.

Ada's obsession with shoes. Ada loves shoes. She likes to watch Elliot and I put them on and take them off. She likes us to put our shoes on her. And she will find a pair of her shoes and bring them over to us so that we can put them on her. She loves shoes.

Ada's kissy face. She doesn't actually make the kissy face when she wants a kiss, she just makes it when she wants to make us laugh. I think of it as her "What you talkin' about Willis" face. Just super cute and it always ends with a smile (see above).

And most of all, I love Ada cuddles. She isn't much of a cuddler, in fact I'll often try to cuddle up with her only to be kicked in the stomach, but when she decides she wants some love, she will snuggle her head into your neck and all the problems in the world melt away.

So tonight when Ada starts to hold her breath because I try to get her to eat chicken, I'll just remember all of my favorite things, and as the song says, then I won't feel soooooo bad.

super cute

Ada wouldn't leave day care today without giving the director, Cindy, a hug. I guess every day Cindy visits the infant room and Ada has taken a liking to her. Well today she didn't visit until we were picking Ada up and as soon as Ada saw her she reached out for the hug. And when she didn't get it right away, she followed Cindy out into the hallway until she got her special little hug. It confirms what I've thought all along - Ada owns that place.

third gear

Never, in my wildest dreams did I think Ada would be so advanced in her tantrum throwing so early. Last night we had guests over for dinner and when we went to put Ada in her high chair so she could join us for dinner she decided it was time to up the ante. She resisted and wiggled and squirmed until we had managed to wrestle her into her seat. That was when she pulled out her latest trick. She opened her mouth and I expected that loud wallowing scream she has mastered so well, but nothing came out - so we waited - one second, two seconds, three seconds... and nothing. Then we all noticed it at once - she was screaming so fiercely that she was not screaming at all. She was holding her breath and in the process turning blue in the face. There is nothing so scary as looking at your little angle start to turn blue due to lack of oxygen. It didn't seem to bother her at all and it got her what she wanted - a seat on mom's lap for dinner.

If I hadn't been so scared about her almost dying, I would be utterly impressed with her ability to hold her breath for that long. I'm sure this must mean something for her future. Perhaps we have an Olympic swimmer on our hands, or an underwater performer, or maybe just a teenager who says she tried to clean her room until she was blue in the face. But I'll know that she really means she tried for 10 seconds, because THAT is how long it takes.

tantrums

I have heard about tantrums. Kids lose it over the silliest thing, throwing themselves on the ground, crying hysterically. I thought I had a few more months before Ada would hit this stage but I'm afraid we are already there.

It started last week when we made a stop at Costco on the way home from work/day care. Ada was happy while we were shopping and was really happy because we let her push the cart. Well hang on to the handle of the cart while I pulled it around the aisles. But once we got in line we couldn't push the cart anymore and Ada had a full out melt down. She screamed and cried and moaned in agony, she threw her frail little body at my legs and threw her head back so that I could see just how upset she was. This was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. What has followed is an almost daily tantrum, and until today only when Ada was really tired and over stimulated. This morning however, she pushed the tantrum cycle into second gear. I dared to put on a cute vest over her t-shirt this morning and it set off a tantrum that lasted well into our commute to work/daycare. I even caved before we left the house and took the vest off, but then I put on socks AND shoes. She was not happy about the socks and then even more unhappy about the shoes. To demonstrate her extreme dislike of both the socks and the shoes she stomped around the kitchen, occasionally stopping to glare at her sneakers. She quieted down as I brought her outside but as soon as she saw the car she started up again, twisting her body, pulling at her car seat buckles, screaming the saddest cry you have ever heard. I tried to cheer her up by singing, making silly faces, bribing her with food - nothing worked. Finally we turned up the radio, ignored the crying and eventually when she got it all out she stopped. I tried turning around a couple of times to make peace but that just set her off again, so I just let her be. She did start babbling a bit as we got closer to work but I didn't dare tempt the tranquil vibe we had in the car by actually turning around to look at her. I'm afraid she has us right where she wants us, lets just hope this phase doesn't last too long.

bruiser

Ada has always been a tough kid. Given who her parents are I guess it isn't that surprising, but one side effect of being so tough is that she goes through life with courage and abandon that most one year olds don't have. She falls and bumps her head, no tears; she runs into a wall, no tears; she bangs her hockey stick on her head, no tears. I was beginning to think that she might have CIPA, the neurological disorder which prevents someone from feeling pain, but this weekend assured us that she is just a gutsy kid - not a sick one.

Over the course of the weekend, Ada crunched her fingers, took a header into a parking lot, and then as she was being dropped off this morning she fell backwards and bonked her head. The fingers and head are OK, but she did scream for a little while after crunching her fingers so I'm guessing it hurt. I think the header startled her more than anything, but she did cry for about 10 seconds. I think she realized at that point that she was OK, it was all surface level damage and that was going to have some major bragging rights this week. It does look horrible though. I bet all day today she had little kids asking her what happened to her face, with Ada answering back, "Well, you should see the other girl".

jealous

Last night as we were playing with Ada, we were all seated in a triangle with our legs pointing towards another person. Elliot was against the closet door with his legs towards Ada, I was against the chair with my legs towards Elliot and Ada was sitting with her back to Elliot's legs and her legs towards me. What a cute isosceles family.

Elliot decided, and I agreed, that it would be nice of him to rub my non-broken toe foot - so he started to rub my foot while we watched Ada play. She was really into her goalie stick and mini-ball and didn't notice what Elliot was doing right away. But as soon as she spotted him giving my foot some loving treatment she immediately moved towards him and took his hands off of my foot. We didn't know what to make of this, and Ada moved on quickly so Elliot went back to rubbing my foot. Well, as soon as Ada saw this she much more emphatically removed his hands, AGAIN. Having made her point very clear, Elliot decided that the foot rub was over. We weren't sure if she thought Elliot was hurting me, if she wanted him to pay more attention to her, or if she was just being her naturally quirky self.

It wasn't until later that night when I was putting Ada to bed that I think I figured it out. I put Ada into her crib while she was still awake and was stroking her face, and her hair (which she has little patience for) to calm her down. I moved down to her foot and then thought that that might tickle so I moved up to her back. That's when the revelation happened. As soon as I moved away from her foot to her back, in a state of semi-consciousness, she extended her leg towards me and waved it around until I started rubbing her foot. A few moments later she was out for the night. A-ha! The motivation for her earlier behavior was crystal clear - she wanted the foot rub, not Mommy.

show-off

We had an Open House meeting at Ada's school earlier this week. The meeting was pretty standard. This is what we are working on, this is what kind of food you can bring in, here is some artwork, etc... Then, at the end, they brought out hand prints in dough that the kids had made earlier in the day. They wanted the kids to paint the hand prints with their parents help. So they passed out little dixie cups of non-toxic, non-staining paint and paint brushes and let the kids go. It was obvious from the very start that this is their normal arts and crafts process. All of the kids knew to stick the brush in the cup. However, they weren't so clear on what to do then. One little girl started painting one of the boys, one of the other little girls started to eat the paint (well most of them did this), and then there was Ada. She took her paint brush with paint on it and started painting the hand print. Well it was more like stabbing the hand print with her paint brush but to all of the other mothers who were watching their little ones eat paint - it was the work of Picaso. Their oohs and ahhs just egged Ada on. She kept stabbing away, until she had her entire hand print (and half the table) covered in bright pink paint. As most of the kids got bored they put their cups of paint on the table. Ada grabbed one of the cups with green paint and added a couple quick stabs of green for a little Jackson Pollack type flair.

cousins

One of the reasons why Elliot and I moved to San Diego was that we wanted our children to grow up around some of our family. Of course we didn't have any children at the time but in theory, that is what we wanted.

Now that Ada and her cousins are old enough to recognize each other and play together, I really believe this is one of the best decisions we have made. Ada and her cousin Taylor hang out on the sidelines of soccer games weekly. They get to see each other every Friday night and every Sunday morning. They are both walking and babbling and have really started to notice each other. Whatever Taylor is doing, Ada wants to do; and whatever Ada is doing, Taylor wants to do. They are not gentle with each other either. In a world where everyone handles them with kid gloves, because they are, well, kids - it must be refreshing for them to be able to tumble around with someone their own size.

Ada also gets to see her older cousins Maia (3 yrs old) and Eric (only 4 months older than Ada) every Monday night. Ada has always been a lot more cautious at Maia and Eric's house than with Taylor and I figured it was because the kids were a bit bigger or the play rougher. It also seems to fit her personality more - observing and thinking rather than just taking action. Last week Ada very timidly started to play with Eric and Maia. This week, she jumped in with both feet. She seems to be really interested in both of her older cousins but in different ways. She likes to follow Eric around, getting into whatever mess he is in, following him around getting in his way. Her interactions with Eric are very similar to those with Taylor - more rough than you might expect from our little observer. With Maia, Ada approaches things much more carefully. She will examine what Maia is working on, will watch her and slowly try to integrate herself into the activity.

I have been lucky to be able to just sit back and watch a lot of this cousin interaction. The look of pure joy on Ada's face as she romped around with Eric last night was just infectious. I love that Ada is getting the benefit of a large family, especially since I didn't have to go through pregnancy and labor 4 times to give it to her. :)

communication

Ada's daycare is attempting to teach her baby sign language. We have picked up a few key signs we are using at home to try to create some consistency. One of these signs is the sign for milk. You basically open and close your hand like you are milking a cow with your thumb at the top of your hand. So for the last few weeks we have been asking Ada if she wants milk and making the sign for milk, feeling sort of like an idiot as she just stared at us like - what are you doing with your hand. Then we noticed that Ada was waving wildly at us at certain times of the day. Wow, we thought, she is really getting the hang of waving Hi to us. How cute. Then one day it dawned on me. If I turn my hand 90 degrees and make the sign for milk it looks an awful lot like waving Hi. Since we made this discovery and Ada has realized we made this discovery she has become quite adamant about her milk requests. Yesterday morning she asked for milk so I fixed a bottle, and while it was warming up I did a few things in the kitchen and Ada played away in the living room. When I walked out to the living room without a bottle of milk she turned and looked at me and did her milk sign WITH BOTH HANDS. The look on her face said. "Where is my milk? Don't even think of coming out here without any milk!" Let's hope she gets less demanding of her wait-staff as she gets older. Otherwise, I'm guessing she will eat one to many meals containing the saliva of her waitress, purposely placed between the bun and the patty.