Tallulah's Blog

Springtime 2006.

I have posted a bunch of Tallulah photos to Flickr. Click here to see all of the photos, or click here to see them grouped into neat little "sets."  The nice thing about Flickr is that I can write captions and you can leave comments and it's all very community-based and Web 2.0-y. Live the future!

In short: Tallulah is still smart, cute, talkative, and very friendly. She's  been taking a class called Studio Creative Play, through which she is actually learning some sign language -- so far she can sign "play," "wind," "forest," "tree," and "rain." We also sing, listen to stories, do a little yoga, and paint during each class. It's pretty much awesome.

Our other usual activities include going to the playground, park, library, bookstore, or just for a walk around the neighborhood. During our walks outside Lula always approaches and befriends any dogs or children who cross her path. She walks right up and says the same thing to everyone: "Hi, whass yer name?" So bold and friendly! Folks are totally disarmed by this, and often faint from the adorability. It is hit-or-miss as to whether she'll volunteer her own name in return, though. Anyway, on Adventure Thursdays (as I have decreed them) we go on more elaborate excursions. So far we've gone to the Prospect Park zoo and carousel, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Museum of Natural History, and the Transit Museum. She loves these trips, and they keep me from going insane with boredom, which is a plus. Thursday happens to be the only day of the week that Lula doesn't have a babysitter and/or a physical or occupational therapy appointment, is the thing. She's still receiving these services because she's still what they call "low tone," which at this point manifests itself as an inability to run, or to jump, or even to walk quickly without "fixing" one of her arms by her side. But she is improving quickly. The increase of outside activity that comes with warmer weather has certainly helped. For example, she started comfortably going down the playground slide (holding on to only one of my hands) just last week.

At home we read tons of books, especially on the potty, where she reliably produces output whenever we place her upon it. We only do this before sleeping times, because she hasn't yet reached the point where she can tell us before she needs to go. We're being very laissez-faire about potty training so far (read: we have no plan.) She's only 2.3 years old, anyway. Kids train late these days.

Tallulah's main obsession right now is, believe it or not, the letters D and W. It's all because of the song "D&W" by They Might Be Giants (off their Here Come the ABCs CD/DVD.) You can actually watch the video for it here. The song lightly sketches out personalities for D and for W, and it is those personalities -- and the letters' friendship -- that Lula plays off during her imaginative play. She uses the D and W letter magnets or the amazing stuffed likenesses created by my sister Debbie as props. Usually, one of them is hiding -- usually W -- and the other (always, sadly, played by me) has to go find him. She manages to trick me into playing this game several times a day by handing me one of the letter magnets (or stuffed letters) while not looking at me, and saying, "Here ya go, Mommy. Hold this, Mommy." And when I absent-mindedly take the letter from her hand she suddenly springs to attention and excitedly says "Hi, D! Hi, D! Whaddareya doing? Where's W? Where's W, D?" And if we draw with crayons, I am commanded to draw D and W displaying different emotions. "Draw a sad, crying D, Mommy. A green one." My daughter, the surrealist.

Mercifully, she has recently branched out to playing with representations of actual living things, usually using her plastic and stuffed animals to act out various mother-baby endangerment scenarios. Basically, she's the baby one, who cries out for the mama one, who is played by me. I make the mama figure go over and nuzzle the baby one and all is good. Tonight things took an interestingly abstract turn, as she picked up a short stack of Duplo blocks and had it say, "Mama?" to a slightly larger stack of blocks. When I played back as the mama blocks, she said "Pick me uppa down?" (which is still how she asks to be picked up) and I said OK and she stuck the short stack of blocks onto the slightly larger stack of blocks, thus making a tall stack of merged mother and baby blocks, a result that probably satisfied some deep-rooted existential toddler anxiety.

There are other pretend scenarios, riffs on Lula's own life experiences: one recent afternoon found all of her plastic cows (she has a surprising number of them) tipped back on their hind ends, "peeing," with sound effects and flushing afterward. And there's a Duplo window that her plastic animals will approach and "buzz" until I say "come in!" so they can open the window. My daughter, she is a city kid.

Enjoy the photos, and I will try to post soon -- probably after our upcoming trip to California.
Love, Sarah.

Happy 2nd Birthday!

Yes, it has been a disgustingly long time since the last post. I've started getting some freelance work again, so all my free time has been spent working. Which leaves me how much free time? Exactly.

But! Today is Tallulah's 2nd Birthday! She's talking in full sentences now, and often sings little songs to herself (usually riffs on some of her favorites, like Elmo's Song or Frere Jacques or Twinkle Twinkle or Rockabye Baby.) Sometimes the songs are accompanied by little dances. She has several: the stiff legged side-to-side, the jerky hip-wiggler, or her "chicken" dance, in which she shrugs her shoulders and says ""tuck tuck tuck!" She's so freakin' cute that it's really unbelievable. It's hard for me to express how overwhelming I find her cuteness. I find myself laughing with delight at her antics several times a day. She calls me Yummy Mommy during our not-long-for-this-world nursing sessions, sticks toys down my shirt as a goof, commands me to eat her fingers, begs to hold (and taste) the "waddermelon lip baum" or eat "pirate booties" ("pirate booties? In a bowl, right here? peeeeeease?")

The incredible toddler love of repetition has started with a vengeance. Her great-grandparents Allie and Tom send her an e-card today that she insisted I repeat at least 30 times. She loves her CDs, too -- They Might Be Giants' NO and Here Come the ABCs are her current faves, and she likes to see the videos for her favorite songs ("Q U? SEE it?") over and over again.

She has many small plastic animals, and every morning for the past few days she has taken a few of the animals and arranged them around the cats' food bowl as if they're eating. Once she brought over a couple of little bowls and put an animal in front of each one. One had a cow at it, and behind the cow, a rhino. I asked her if the rhino was waiting in line, and she said yes.

Oh, and the other day, she sat down on her new potty during pre-bath naked time, and she actually peed! In the potty! And then she pooped during her bath, which was fairly horrifying and kind of took the wind out of our proud potty-success sails. And on the further parental pride tip, she sort of drew a letter Q! She drew a looping circle, and then a sketchy tail across part of it. She was copying a Q I had drawn for her (at her request.) I swear, it was amazing, and so far unrepeated. But still! Writing!

Because she is two (today!) Lula is now magically allowed to eat chocolate and peanut butter. (not necessarily together, though I've heard that combination is delicious.) So today Lula had her first real taste of chocolate, in cupcake form. It was a little hard to tell, because she seemed to enjoy the frosting very much, and things got a little messy there, but: I believe that she's not a big fan of the chocolate. Maybe later. (Her mom loves the stuff.) Next up is peanut butter, which means that, thank god, I might be able to make her a PB and J sandwich for lunch every now and again. It's hard to pack a lunch for a kid who almost exclusively eats mac and cheese or pizza at each meal. Sometimes chased by a small bowl of cottage cheese or cereal (Mighty Bites, Daddy cereal (Wheat Chex) or Mommy cereal (varies).)

That's it for now. It's way past my bedtime. Happy Birthday, Tallulah sweetie-pie. Your parents love you times a million.

- Sarah.

No, no time. No time.

We're down to only one nap a day now, and the transition was rough on all of us. During one month Lula went from a gal who napped twice a day, sometimes two hours each time, to someone who naps once a day for an hour and a half (if we're lucky.) It's been hard. She's still tired a lot of the time; she just won't (or can't) sleep more. She's still waking up at 5 am, too. It would make me upset, if I let myself believe it's a long-term state of affairs. Instead I delude myself every day, thinking, "Goodness, how early it is! I hope Lula's feeling OK, because surely a healthy baby wouldn't wake up so early in the morning -- or nap for such a short amount of time! She will certainly sleep later tomorrow." Good old coping mechanisms.

By the way, that thing where Lula says everything is a "time"? She does that now whenever she says "no" (which is quite frequently). For example, if you're singing a song that she doesn't want to hear at that moment from you, she might shake her head vigorously and reach out to shush your mouth or push your face away from her, while repeating, "No, no time. No time." Though she really clips that word "time," as if she's aware that it doesn't make sense in this context but she has a compulsion to say it anyway, so it's more like "no tym. no tym." If you can imagine that.

At night, part of Lula's bedtime ritual involves me listing some of the animals that are sleeping, in order to lull her into thinking that all the fun is over for the day, because, hello! all the animals are sleeping now, and so you should be, too. But she has recently started to suggest animals to me, breaking away from nursing (yes, I'm still nursing her before sleep, and the thought of weaning right now makes me fear for my life and sanity) to say things like "hurs!" or "cats!" or "bunny wabbis!" or "chichens!" or "punnies!" (um, horse, cats, bunny rabbits, chickens, and ponies.) I understand most of what she says these days, though I have to translate in my head sometimes (she says W instead of R, and D instead of G or J, for example) and even then I am often flummoxed. For instance, why has "flauwas" become "flauwies" instead of "flowers"? And what does "tiboe" or "dubay" mean, and why does she repeat them so often?

We have reached the age where Scott and I can understand her when no one else can, if only because we know the things she's referencing. "Pony time" means it's time to brush her teeth, because her toothbrush has My Little Pony on it. "Mahtching, mahtching!" refers to the song "We Are The Dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner ("We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching"). "Munning" means "good morning," as in, stop pretending to sleep, you a-hole, and play with me. "Uppadown," as I've said before, means "pick me up," and "ee tu" means "take this," though I believe a literal translation is "thank you." As in, what you say when someone takes something that you're handing to them. These last two, along with the word "Mommy," probably make up almost half of all the words she speaks during a day. Uppadown, mommy? Uppadown? Ee tu, mommy. Ee tu.

New York City is starting to piss me off. I used to take the difficulty of living here as a kind of challenge, or even, dare I admit it, a coolness test. But now, instead of worrying that I might fail at "making it" here, I'm just feeling very angry at the city in general. Most of this has to do with the absurd housing bubble. My apartment's value has doubled in the past four years, and though that sounds great, I can't afford to move anywhere because everyone else's apartments have gotten more expensive too. Even the ones in "edgy" neighborhoods are ridiculously expensive. I'm sorry, but if I have to worry about walking home safely after dark, I shouldn't have to pay $600,000 for an apartment in your neighborhood. And I don't even want to think about the schooling situation, because I might actually vomit from anxiety, and this is a new keyboard. Needless to say that if we live in an area where we can afford more than one bedroom we'll have to send Lula to private school ($23k/year), because all the places in good school districts are astronomically expensive. And the "good" schools are overcrowded with a lottery to get in, even if you're in the right district.

I don't know what the solution is. The suburbs that are close to the city are also crazy expensive, and have the added expense of high real estate taxes, a car or two, and the inevitable therapy for me and my fellow suburb-hating husband. Scott and I are weighing our options, while hoping we can wait out the housing bubble. We'll keep you posted.
- Sarah.

Words she knows

Lula knows Love and Freedom and Pudding and Ponies. Our work here is done.
- Scott.

Summertime, and the toddler is toddlin'

Yes, yes, it's been a long time. I'm working again (very part-time) so my arms have been hurting a bit. And Lula has been changing so rapidly that it's hard to imagine keeping up with this blog. What follows will be an abbreviated attempt at an update.

There is walking. And now there is talking, too. She adds words to her vocabulary every day. She has even said what the doctor claims are "sentences," like "find Mommy" or "find shoes." The doctor says that's a two-year-old level of speech, which made us get all puffed up. This about a girl who crawled for the first time, just a few feet, YESTERDAY. At one and a half years old. And who still doesn't sleep through the night, tragically enough. She was starting to, more and more, a few weeks ago, but that has stopped. In fact, today she skipped her morning nap for the first time. Horrors! I usually shower and nap during that time, and without that break, I'm going to be one stinky and exhausted mama. Anyway I'm hoping that once her naps have fully consolidated her little internal sleep cycle will let her sleep through the night again.

Back to bragging about Lula's amazing brain: one day a couple of months ago she just started being able to count to ten. "one, two, free, fo, fie, sih, sehmen, ayt, nine, ten!" It's just heart-meltingly cute. And by now she can read and identify all of her numbers up to ten. She can read some or most of her letters, too, and though she won't sing the alphabet song herself, she will help prompt you if you pause during it. And she especially likes to identify "B" and "W" right now. I don't know why. So the numbers definitely came first, which might mean that we have a brilliant mathematician in the making here, or just a regular geek-in-training, or just that we have more 123 books than ABC books. Who knows?

And the talking. People, the talking is unbelievable. She has many commands, of course. There's the "Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?" which I still find kind of cute and amusing, thank God. And the "This? This. This?" which is sometimes used sort of like a verb. For example: "This? Bubbles." means "get me those bubbles." There's the classic "Side?" which means either nursing ("switch sides") or going outside. She's recently started to say "uppa-down?" whenever she wants to be picked up -- and I have no idea why the "down" is in there, since she will say "down" when she wants to get down. Oh, and she also says "chip?" whenever she wants a snack of any kind. And when she's Done with an activity -- be it eating a meal, or (*shudders*) riding in a car, she says, "done? done?"

Every part of our day now has a Time. For breakfast, it's Waffle Time; after Bath Time is Teeth Time (not that she allows any toothbrushing whatsoever right now, but anyway); and of course there's Nap Time and Night-Night Time. And instead of saying "hi" now she sometimes says "oh, hi!" as if she's been surprised by an old friend calling her on the telephone. Which of course is probably where she got it -- from us pretending to talk on a "phone" she's handed us (usually a calculator or a remote control.)

And of course there are dozens of nouns, as you can imagine. She particularly likes to identify suns. A sun is any circle with ray-like protuberances. Bonus points if there's a smiley face on it. There are many suns out there, if you look carefully enough.

She's been doing physical therapy with Leslie, and she seems to enjoy it, though Leslie makes her work hard. Basically they play together, and while they play Leslie moves Lula around so she uses muscles she needs to strengthen, or she moves Lula so she can learn how to sit up or get down or etc. It seems to be working, because Lula can now sit down on a chair and stand up with ease, and she can roll around from lying down to a sitting position. She's really been enjoying rolling/wrestling about on the floor recently, first putting her head on the ground (while standing up, so she forms an upside-down V), then flopping over sideways, then kinda crawling a bit, then getting herself up to sit, then pulling herself up to kneel or stand. It is a relief to see her finally do these things. Of course, this has made her much more physically adventurous. She's started to climb on things (very low things, for now), and can climb up a set of stairs at the playground, where the hand rails are placed Just So. And for now I'm just grateful that she feels comfortable enough in her physical abilities to explore on her own.

So see? See all that has happened? We also went up to Lake George, and Lula Loves Loves Loves the lake and the sprinklers at the playgrounds here and the pools of various family members. She is a little water child. At Lake George she also really enjoyed simply walking around and checking out the flowers. "Flauwa? Flauwa?"

OK, time for me to go nap while I still can. More short updates to come soon, I promise.
- Sarah.

Dancing Machine

Tallulah is a dancing machine. She does this sort of raising and lowering of her shoulders (alternating sides) and wiggling her little booty. Recently she has started dancing almost every time she can hear music -- even if it's just me singing. She dances while walking around, too. Sometimes she pauses but other times she just incorporates the shoulder shrugs into her walking. See for yourself!

New Springtime Photos Up

There's some new photos up from the Tot Lot, the Prospect Park Carousel, and the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Check them out! They're in the Lula 2005 album to the right. Real blog post to come...

So much to tell!

I'm way, way behind. There are many stories to tell, I'm afraid, so this is going to be a long one.

The reason why Lula was full of falls the day I last posted was because she was about to get horribly ill! She got a bad fever and actually vomited (for the first time ever) the very next day, and she stayed sick with a fever and diarrhea for over a week. The illness made her incredibly clingy and wouldn't eat (except breast milk) or let me put her down. It was rough for all of us.

Oh, and after the illness? We found that she had sprouted FOUR MOLARS at the same time. So either that actually caused the illness or just made it much worse. By the way, Lula hates getting her teeth brushed, and will purse her lips and shake her head to get away from the toothbrush, pushing the brush away and throwing it on the ground if she grabs it. I'm currently soliciting advice for how I might get her to accept the Responsibilities of Teeth Ownership...

The weekend after the illness we went to NJ for a visit and a bit of a break. It helped me and Scott because my parents took Lula as soon as she woke up every morning, leaving us to sleep in for a couple of hours. Unfortunately this visit marked the beginning of her new wake-up time: dawn. As in, when the sky is just starting to get a little bit lighter. As in, around 5am. One morning last week it was actually 4:50am. I looked forward to Daylight Savings Time this year, because it meant that now she gets up at 6am instead of 5am, and 6am now feels like a reasonable wake-up time for me. (I am a night person.)

Anyway, the best part of the NJ visit was a trip to the Rutgers agricultural college farm during what happened to be Dairy Day. There Lula met some goats, pigs and piglets, horses, and most importantly, cows. There was a huge shed of dairy cows there, and you could pet them and feed them hay. Did you know that cows like to lick things, particularly salty things? Did you know that, in addition to being small and easy to reach, babies are pretty salty? What transpired was a pretty remarkable cow-and-baby lovefest. Cows have enormous, long, sticky tongues. And Lula found the cows hilarious and fun, not terrifying, even though they were in fact a little scary, as their heads are about as big as Lula's entire person. I kept whisking her away from the cows once the cows got a little taste, because if I hadn't, who knows what would've happened? The cows' tongues were reaching out as if her face was a clump of grass that they could easily wrap around and pull out to eat. As it happened she just got gently tapped with stinky cow saliva a bunch of times while she giggled and put her hands up to her face. Of course we took tons of photos; take a look.

Also in our photos are a bunch we took during our visit to see The Gates in Central Park. We went on February 20th, arguably the most crowded day of the entire installation. Like most people who visited The Gates, we came, we saw, they were kind of neat, we took pictures, we got tired, we went home.

The walking is going really well. Lula's favorite thing now is to walk through the apartment, finding items in drawers, on bookshelves, or in purses, and then carrying these items to other parts of the apartment. She likes carrying blankets, books, and even (and unfortunately) the cats' water dish. And now that she's a toddler she's started to figure out that there are things she's not allowed to do, like exploring the litterbox, playing with lightbulbs, or chewing on tubes of Chapstick. No tantrums yet, thank God, but she's been keeping her parents on their toes.

The last thing I'll mention is that the list of things she'll eat is getting shorter and shorter. Right now it includes yogurt, cottage cheese, crackers, bread, waffles, American cheese, certain jars of baby food and only at certain times, Annie's Shells and Cheese, and applesauce. Items closely related to items on the list (ie. pancakes, cookies) are also sometimes acceptable. She likes what she likes.

I hope I don't give the impression that taking care of Lula is a total drag. She is as much a delight as ever, if not more so. She's really fun, quite frankly. She now loves to be "chased" and will laugh so hard once you've almost "caught" her that she will fall down so that you must catch her. She also finds the action of knocking while saying "knock-knock-knock" totally hilarious, and will repeat to you "na-na-na!" and make a little knocking gesture with her fist. She gives the best hugs, tucking her arms to her sides and humping her butt to snuggle up closer to you. She couldn't be cuter or more wonderful.

Mobility

Alert, alert! We have full-on walking. Over the last few days Lula has tranformed from a walking-4-steps-to-fall-onto-something baby to a steady-walking MACHINE. She's actually been refusing to hold my hand while she walks. She does this funny, shuffling straight-legged walk, with her hands held out in front of her a little. And every so often she pauses to sway forward and back, losing and then regaining her balance. That balance correction thing is what enables her to walk for many steps in a row, I think. Plus she's learned to fall better, generally.

I say "generally" because today was full of falls. She fell and hit the back of her head several times, and fell to a sitting position several times, sometimes falling onto her side from there; and she fell on her face at the playground (on those rubbery tiles, not concrete, but still), a fall from which she did not emotionally recover until we got home. She also skipped her afternoon nap today and yesterday, which may have something to do with it. Or it may be another symptom of whatever is really going on -- growth spurt, cognitive leap fallout, etc. -- inside that little body of hers. It is unknowable.

But this weekend was great, in that we brought her to the Tea Lounge (a large, crowded coffee house near us) and she walked and walked and walked. She walked up to strangers, children and adults, and poked and grabbed at them, shouting "Bah!" or "ma ma ma ma," dribbling saliva everywhere. She walked up to the pastry display and banged on the glass. She walked to the door, then out the door, to the curb. She was very, very happy about all this.

Of course this means I have to learn some new social skills. It reminds me a little of the summer I spent canvassing door-to-door for NJPIRG. I have to be able to suss out which strangers will welcome or engage with my daughter and which ones will be annoyed by her interruptions. And I have to keep my senses peeled for the crazies, too. (Peeled senses? Yeah, you heard me.) It's a hard thing when you haven't showered that day and maybe you're feeling a bit shy and introverted and dorky. But you have a child who is dying to get out there and interact with The People. And that's what's good for her. So.

There has also been some language happening. She's been saying "ba-eeeee!" for "good-bye" for a couple of weeks now, along with the "Mmmm" moo and the "Bah!" baa. But just recently she's started saying "ha" for hat and "bsh" for brush. She can identify most commonly-illustrated animals by pointing, too. Butterflies and ladybugs are favorites, and are both (still) "buh." And I believe she's started saying "yass" for "yes." (she's only done that one a few times so far.) And she loves to go over to her books, pick one out, and then walk over to me and hold the book up so I will pick her up and read to her.

She's becoming more interactive and more fun every day. It's truly amazing to witness.

Perhaps later I'll blog about my work/home dilemma, but for now, let me just say this: I don't know how the housewives did it. Taking care of Lula is a more than full-time job, and although I clean up after myself and Lula throughout the day, general apartment upkeep (cleaning the bathroom, say, or mopping) just never gets done. The only way I COULD do such chores is while Lula's asleep, and while she's napping I'm usually either passed out or trying to feed myself. And then in the evening (the two hours between my dinner and my bedtime) I'm so fried that the thought of cleaning the bathroom makes me seriously despressed. It's enough to contemplate self-medicating using alternating doses of dexedrine and valium! Wait a minute...

Ba!

Lula got her first pair of real shoes this past weekend -- a pair of these from a Stride-Rite in Connecticut (thanks, Connecticut Grandparents!). Lula is a size 4 1/2 XW. That's Extra-Wide, folks. The shoes are a bit of a struggle, as Lula likes to curl up her toes during the shoe application process, which pretty much brings the process to a halt. I've tried tickling her, standing her up, laying her down, etc., and the only thing that semi-works is sticking a finger under her foot and physically preventing her toes from curling while I try and jam the shoes on her. Once they're on, she clomps around and wobbles like a drunken sailor. But that's getting better each day.

There's been some advances in language development. "Ba!" is still a favorite and means baby, ball, or sheep-noise, depending on the context. She knows that cows go "Mmmm," and dogs go "Fffff." Totally brilliant. I guess the vowel sounds will come later... I've been singing "What a Wonderful World" while nursing her before naps, and it took me a while to realize that she breaks off from nursing and says "ba!" to me every time I sing, "I hear babies crying..." In fact, she broke off and moo-ed at me tonight when I sang the words "ever mooooving and free" (from the folk song "River.")

I've forgotten to give you the check-up data. Here it is:
Height: 31.5 in. (97%)
Weight: 22 lb. 4 oz. (69%)
Head Circ. (when do they stop measuring this?): 48 cm (97%)
I told the doctor that she hasn't figured out how to sit up from a lying down position yet, and the doc told me to go ahead and call Early Intervention. It's a statewide program that provides free early intervention (duh) in the form of physical therapy and the like. "They will teach her how to sit up," the doctor said. "Wow!" said I. I haven't called yet...

Foodwise, the cow's milk? Not a hit. It enters her mouth and immediately exits again. She still loves loves loves cottage cheese and yogurt, so she's getting her dairy. And she will ALWAYS eat popcorn, Cheerios, Zwieback toast, crackers, animal crackers, cookies -- basically, any carbs. But in general she's been accepting fewer foods, not more. I'm still trying to find a vegetable that she will eat. Rejections so far: carrots, peas, string beans, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, broccoli. I've tried steaming them and mashing them and mixing them with favorite foods (the afore-mentioned dairy items) but no dice.

Sometimes Lula grabs my cheeks with her little hands and moves my face so she can "kiss" me on the lips with her mouth open wide. And when she walks 4-5 steps (at a time! by herself!) toward me, falling into my arms, she giggles with wild delight, panting with a sort of "hoo! hoo!" noise. Her sleep schedule still deeply sucks. But still every day I think my heart might burst from the love.