I am moving my baby diary to www.livejournal.com/users/planetarymom.
As predicted, Petra can now stand unaided. And, she can walk. Yes, really. It started out that she would let go of what she was holding on to in order to examine something in her hand, and wouldn't realize that she wasn't holding on to anything. As soon as she saw that she wasn't holding on, she would fall - it's a bit like my memories of learning to ride a bike. On one occasion, she stood for 17 seconds without realizing it, making several automatic corrections to avoid overbalancing, but as soon as she looked away from the toy she was holding, she got this concerned look on her face and tumbled to the ground. Now, however, she's even able to get into a standing position in the middle of a room with no handholds. And on Wednesday a week ago, Ari was holding her under the arms to help her walk, let go of her, and she took her first step ever (with both of us watching and cheering her on). She promptly fell, of course, but learning to walk isn't that easy. I should know, having relearned to walk less than a year and a half ago. She's as determined as I was. The child will be walking well by her first birthday, I'll wager. She can already walk five or six steps unaided. It's so exciting to watch her so persistently stand up, take as many steps as she can, fall, and get right up and try again. My parents think she'll be strong-willed like I was, and it excites me to see how hard she'll work to get something she wants. I know there are tremendous challenges with raising a child with a determined will, but I'm strong-willed myself, and have over 24 years more experience with getting my own way... (grin).
The past week or so, it seemed Petra wanted to nurse every 20-30 minutes for much of the day, and her appetite for solids didn't seem to have decreased any. The extra liquids meant she also peed twice as often, so we used many more diapers than usual. I'd gotten used to having 3-4 wet diapers a day and 2-3 at night; suddenly it was more like 8-10 in the daytime. I found this quite frustrating, since I'd been taking her to pee mostly based on timing and her timing suddenly entirely changed. A frequent sequence of events was as follows: I notice she is wet. I change her and offer her a chance to pee some more. She flatly refuses, arching her back and whining. I put her in a diaper or panties or training pants, depending on what's available. 20 minutes later, it occurs to me that she might need to pee again. Hating to irritate her and thinking, “It's just been 20 minutes, though!” I decide to wait 5 minutes. 4 minutes later she is wet. Repeat process mentioned above. The solution turned out to be an interesting one. I first decided I would just irritate her 20 minutes after the last pee. Then I thought, what if her trying to lift my shirt and saying “mamamama” is a sign she needs to pee some of the time she does it, instead of always meaning she wants milk (which I had been assuming). So I spent a day where, each time she started tugging at my shirt, I gave her a chance to pee before automatically feeding her, and our success rate about doubled. I've also realized that just because she whines and struggles when I give her a toilet opportunity doesn't mean that she doesn't need to go. At this stage, there are many more interesting things to do than taking care of an uncomfortably full bladder, but often if I just hold her for 10 seconds, she quits fussing and goes. In my opinion, making her unhappy for 10 seconds is better than letting her wet herself and be wet for probably more than 10 seconds, and then have to lie still for a diaper change. We've been using training pants more often now. I picked up some of the Gerber ones for cheap from someone whose girl was past that stage, and I've started sewing some of my own from a pattern someone let me use. They are really cute.
Poop, by the way, is a lot cuter when it comes out of a baby than when it comes out of a pigeon. I would like to say that, although I had no plans of poisoning them like I wanted to do to my college roommate's pet bird, I did entertain violent thoughts against the pigeons alluded to in the last entry. A pair of pigeons, a couple months ago, built a nest in a corner of our balcony. This was fine, that corner became rather poopy but it was hidden away between the wall and a storage container where we never walked anyway, and it was fun to show Petra the homely (the nicest possible description) baby birds as they grew. Then, they got to the stage Petra is at: able to walk, but not fly. They waddled poopily all over our balcony, particularly enjoying hopping up onto the strollers we store there, until the largest area not covered in pigeon poop was smaller than Petra's foot. I kept meaning to clean up, but the amount of fresh poop that accumulated daily discouraged me, in addition to having no idea what to do with Petra while I was cleaning. Then, this weekend, Ari confirmed his status as World's Best Husband by spending Sunday afternoon evicting the pigeons (who had recently learned to fly, and just needed to be convinced not to fly back to our balcony) and washing the balcony and the strollers. So, the short version: love Ari, hate pigeons.
We travelled to California on the weekend of the 15th, for Caltech graduation and the baptism of our friends the Parkers' baby. It was really neat to see various friends graduate. I was so happy for Luigi, who came in my year but left Tech a few times. Having taken 5 years to graduate myself, and remembering how overwhelmed with joy I was at getting through, I was thrilled to see Luigi make it 2 years later. Joe Carroll, who was (I think) a junior, maybe a senior, when I was a freshman, also graduated. My good friends Beth and Maryam were among the many others I got to cheer for. Beth's sister Emily is my best friend from Tech, and she and Dan and their little baby John (exactly 7 months younger than Petra) were there for graduation. It was fantastic to see them again and to meet little John. On Saturday evening we went observing with Anne and some other friends, and despite the windy night were able to see some neat objects through Ari's “medium” telescope, his 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. (The “big” telescope takes up the entire boot of our car plus the roof, and you ride in it, so it wasn't practical to take on this trip). We went to Trinity Baptist for church on the Sunday morning, and it was really good to reconnect with friends there. I wish there were more churches like Trinity.
We're planning another trip the coming two weeks. We leave for Houston this Sunday and will return on Sunday the 17th. This means that, while in Houston, we will celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary, Ari's 26th birthday, and Petra's first birthday. It also means I don't have to do all the planning for whatever festivities will mark the end of Petra's first year, because I know my mother-in-law will have plenty of ideas for how to celebrate. I'm really looking forward to not having to clean house for two weeks! And, to showing off our little girl, who makes friends wherever she goes.
Petra is sitting in her high chair, eagerly consuming bread I baked, and more of it is going down her gullet than onto the floor. This is a fairly new development, her liking solids enough to eat quantities of them. For a while she didn't seem interested in more than a few bites of things that weren't fruit, and we were concerned. Recently, though, she's decided that if it comes off my plate or out of my mouth, it must be okay, at least most of the time. So I've crunched up raw carrots for her, and fed her lentil-tomato pasta sauce, and given her chunks of cucumber, and she likes all of the above. Anything she can feed herself as a finger food tends to go over well. She also happily drinks water from a sippy cup, because we haven't regularly fed her juice. We wanted her to be willing to drink plain water, and will probably introduce juice in not too much longer. I wonder what she'd think of carrot juice? She still nurses multiple times a day, so hopefully as long as I'm eating my vegetables, she'll also benefit from my good nutrition. I have no intention of weaning any time soon, so my milk should still provide many of her needs while she's learning to eat a variety of foods.
We now have an expert cruiser. Petra will happily walk upright as long as her two hands are on something stable. So in addition to working her way across the bookshelf, table, and chairs, she can take an adult's hands and walk with said adult for arbitrarily long. This usually lasts until she sees something interesting, at which point she lets go and crawls toward whatever it is she wants to investigate. If it weren't for balance, she could walk now, but I've never seen her even stand unsupported for more than a second or two. I bet she will be by next time I write, though.
Another skill that opens up a whole new world to Petra is that of climbing. She started by climbing stairs, which she managed quite easily. She fairly flies from our second-floor apartment to the third floor, going almost as quickly as I did with two broken limbs a year and a bit ago. She can't get back down, and when I've tried to show her how to crawl sdrawkcab down the stairs she's gotten annoyed: “Why are you trying to get me down the stairs? I want to go up!” The ability to climb small things like steps has led to an ability to ascend larger objects, like the recycle bin (a plastic tub with a lid) and the rocking chair. The recycle bin is located next to the kitchen, so from atop it, she can push around my ceramic storage cannisters (which I'd like to have avoid any dramatic encounters with gravity) and pull plugs from the wall (which seriously terrifies me, as her fingers are small enough to touch the metal prongs while they're still in the wall if she chooses to do so). So I need to pay careful attention to when she's on top of the recycle bin, and typically just move the recycle bin away from the wall when she is. The other day, she exhibited some good problem solving. I had the laundry basket in the middle of the floor, upside down, and she was enjoying climbing onto that. I looked away for a little while, thinking she couldn't get into too much trouble (ha, ha), and when I got back she'd pushed the basket against the single bed we keep in our living room and used it to climb onto the bed. Fortunately, the worst she could do was to pull a picture off our bookshelf, and it had the good sense to land gently on the carpet and not any of the debris on the floor, so it wasn't broken. However, Petra's mad climbing skills still only go one way. When she wants to descend, she squirms out head and hands first, and slowly overbalances with her hands reaching toward the floor. This sometimes works, and sometimes results in bruises or dings to her head, with subsequent tears. So, and this is clearly the refrain of all mothers of almost-toddlers, I need to keep an eye on her.
It seems like Petra is suddenly a five times better communicator than she was a month or two ago. She's been consistently using “mamamama” for “feed me” or “give me that”, and calls me “mama” at least half the time. In addition, she began signing for “more” about two weeks ago, which helps when feeding her (she also spits food out if she's not interested any more). When I talk to her, she often repeats most of the vowels and sometimes one of the consonants of the last word of a sentence. “Hey, Petra, see the birds? There are two baby birds.” “Beuh.” “This little piggy went wee, wee, wee, all the way home.” “Hoooe.” It's really neat that she's trying to imitate my speech. She seems to say “dis” a lot, I don't know if it's because I'm always naming things (“This is a spoon. This is a book. This is a comb.”) or if it's just a random sound she makes. In any case, she can clearly communicate, semi-verbally, when she wants things, and I'm trying to use several signs with her (milk, more, eat, potty, up, down, sleep) in the hopes that she'll start using more of them now that signing “more” typically gets her more of what she wants. She just, for the first time, used the sign for milk, so although I nursed her 20 minutes ago, I decided to reinforce the link between sign and result! It would be very helpful if she started communicating manually in a variety of situations, since it'll likely be a while before she has a large, comprehensible spoken vocabulary.
I *heart* the public library. I've found some fun books for Petra, as well as really enjoying the variety of books in the adults' nonfiction section. I'm working my way through a history of South Africa. My memories of school lessons in South African history are somewhat dim and mostly feature a rather incompetent teacher droning in a monotone about something irrelevant and boring while forcing us to copy an overhead verbatim into our notebooks as well as giving us a photocopy of said overhead... I didn't learn much, and I'm not sure if I was even taught much. I'm finding the book really fascinating, as it covers the history of all the people of South Africa and not just the whites (another problem with my history lessons in school). I've also enjoyed reading about nutrition (wanting to make sure I feed Petra well, and the rest of us too), and am becoming more and more convinced that animal products (milk and eggs as well as meat, which I don't eat anyway) aren't that good for us. So I'm trying to be careful to focus on plant-based sources of calcium, and enjoying a variety of new recipes and meal planning. Not that I plan on going totally vegan; I just want to focus less on eggs and dairy as important parts of our diet. Ari's less than thrilled about my new-found insanity, so I'm trying to find an appropriate balance, but I think we're working it out. He, of course, is free to eat whatever he wants, and I don't want to make him feel otherwise. I've also found some good books about babies' language development. One important concept that seems to be repeated is to follow the child's focus of attention and talk about what she is interested in. So I'm consciously trying to spend at least some time daily just watching what Petra does and talking to her about it, emphasizing key words. “It's a book. You're holding the book. It's Mommy's book. I like books. Books are fun.” This will hopefully help her to connect words to objects, and enhance her language development. I like having a few guidelines of effective ways of talking to my child, so as not to aim my speech too high or low for her. At this stage, it seems, short but grammatical sentences are best, and talking about what Petra is immediately interested in ensures that she will care about what I'm saying. Nursery rhymes are also great, as the ear naturally gravitates toward rhymes, so I enjoy playing tickling games or action games with her.
My grandmother from Norway (I call her Bestemamma) came to visit for a couple of days in early May. Bestemamma has been on a round-the-world trip; she had just spent a few months with her brother in New Zealand and flew to us via LA, then continued to North Carolina where she's spending another month or so before returning to Norway. Given that she's 80 years old, this itinerary is quite impressive! While she was here, we visited Kitt Peak so she could see one of the telescopes Ari has used, and went to the Desert Museum because it provides a great overview of the region and its plant and animal life. Petra enjoyed both places as well, and is just getting big enough to start really enjoying looking at things, though I'm not sure quite how much she got out of it. Petra really enjoyed her Oldemor (great-grandmother), though, and vice versa. Bestemamma played “so big” with Petra and bounced her on her foot to sing “Tråfimpen” (a Norwegian children's song that my great-grandfather did with me). It was neat to see Bestemamma's joy in interacting with her first great-grandchild, which she hadn't known she would ever experience.
In mid-May, we travelled first to North Carolina and from there to Philadelphia for my brother Paul's graduation. Since my parents and Bestemamma were planning to drive from NC to Philly, we decided to spend more time with them by flying to NC instead of Philly and joining them on the long drive. Another plus was that we had four generations of Cecilie, and could take pictures of Petra Cecilie, Jane Cecilie, Eva Cecilie (my mom) and Ella Cecilie (my grandmother) all together in one place. It was really special. In addition to watching Paul earn his bachelor's in Physics (yup, we're both nerds), we got to meet his girlfriend, Maria. I'd heard so much about her, and felt like everyone but me had met her, but we really hit it off. Turns out she went to the same high school as my friend Anne Rajala and they rode the bus together. Small world! In any case, I don't have a sister yet, but I want Maria for a sister. Presumably it'll still be a while before such takes place, but Paul has my complete approval in his choice of girlfriend.
Unfortunately, with all that travelling, I caught a cold. On the plane ride back from NC to Tucson, I was having chills and fever, and unfortunately I gave the cold to Petra as well. After a week or so, Ari joined in the misery. It never seemed quite serious enough to call the doctor; Petra ran a fever and then it went away, and it seemed like the kind of thing that, given enough rest, would resolve itself. Which it is now, sloooowly, doing. We're all still coughing and blowing our noses (except Petra, who would much rather smear snot all over her face than let me come near her with a Kleenex), but feeling less miserable. It's nice to see Petra running all over again, instead of lying in my lap, half asleep but too miserable to sleep alone.
A little while back, I invested in an inflatable baby swim seat, and we've gone swimming with it a couple of times. The swimming pool in our apartment complex is a rather putrid shade of olive, so I don't use that. My friend Janine invited me over last week (Ari had a telescope run, so she wanted to help un-lonesome me) and we swam in her pool, and then Ari's advisor had a party for his 2-year-old son and we used their swimming pool. Petra really enjoys the water. It's fun to see her splash and just enjoy the experience, and it's fun to have an excuse to play in a swimming pool myself!
A long-awaited milestone has occurred: Petra is now capable of sleeping through the night. Note that I didn't say “Petra sleeps through the night on a regular basis.” Bestemamma's visit, the trip to NC/Philly, and our colds have definitely thrown us off. But a few days before Bestemamma arrived, Ari and I both got what we assume was food poisoning. We both lost everything in our GI tracts and felt terribly weak, and I was particularly hard hit. I couldn't really eat properly for almost a day, so toward the end of it, I just didn't feel like feeding Petra in the middle of the night. If it weren't for Ari, I probably would have anyway, but he told me to let her cry it out (in the other room) and get my sleep, just for that night, to regain my strength. Which I did, and disliked, but was too faint and weak to get up against his wishes. The next two nights, Petra slept through without a peep (at least not a peep that woke me). Then Bestemamma came, we put Petra back in our room, and she decided that having parents around meant she got to be awake whenever she wanted. That threw everything off, but since our return and Petra's recovery from the worst of the cold, she's slept through most nights that I nurse her when we're going to bed. This is really nice. If I don't nurse her when we're going to bed, she wakes me up at 2 or 3 am, but then typically sleeps until at least 6am, sometimes 7am. I'm feeling much more human!
I won't bore you with how evil it was of me not to write the past month. I'll just tell you all about our hike. Over spring break (shortly after the last entry was posted), Ari and I (and Petra) went on a 4-day, 40-mile hike with a few friends over the Rincon Mountains. It was a super adventure. To begin with, it was the three of us, Joel and Jeannette, and Ryan and Janine. We hiked from the far (east) side of the Rincons, where we parked our car, to the near side where Joel and Jeannette parked their car so we could carpool. The first day we climbed a good deal, I don't remember how far, over about 8 miles of distance. We have a super cushy Petra-pack which also has space for a few things below where she sits, so I carried her and some of our gear, while Ari carried a huge pack frame with our tent and both sleeping bags. The next morning, Ryan and Janine headed back while the rest of us went on a day hike up Rincon Peak, 8480 feet high. It was a 16-mile hike, made worse by the fact that there was a deep valley between us and the peak. But the view from the top was fantastic, a 360-degree panorama. My knee started hurting quite a bit, so it was good I wasn't carrying anything that day (Ari took Petra). The third day, we needed to cover 10 miles with our full packs, and after a mile and a half I didn't think I stood a chance of making it. My knee was really killing me, as were both my ankles. As we were discussing what to do, it started snowing. However, we found a solution. Jeannette took the Petra-pack, and we transferred some of Jeannette's stuff to Ari and Joel's packs, and I was able to carry Jeannette's pack, which was less top-heavy and much more comfortable. It also didn't have the problem of weighing twice as much when Petra was crying. I know, her mass was unchanged, but I stand by my previous statement: a crying baby weighs twice as much. The rearrangement of packs made it much easier, and we reached our campsite only a couple of hours after sunset. The last day was quite easy, six miles, but the path seemed determined to go up and over every bit of topography rather than going around. I was tired beyond description at the end of it, and my knee hurt for days, but not a bad, damaged hurt, more a complaining muscle type of hurt. I didn't feel nearly as wiped out as after our Mauna Loa hike on Hawaii when we were engaged (Ari and I limped into the Denny's after that hike, leaning on each other, because our feet were more than 50% blister). Petra was so good on the hike! We'd walk for a while, and then take her out when we stopped to rest, give her a chance to pee (she was dry more than half the time), feed her if necessary, and continue. She decided that she likes petrology (or at least, sucking on rocks that we deemed sufficiently large and clean to not pose a safety hazard), but doesn't like having to sit in a Petra-pack for hours on end. She'd be quite happy in the morning, and then get rather irate later in the day at being cooped up on someone's back. Unfortunately, she got a sunburn, because we weren't quite as diligent about sunscreening her as we should have been. Now I have baby sunscreen and try to put some on her whenever we go out; Tucson sunshine is brutal.
After the success of our hike (I made it, with a pack, even if it wasn't as heavy a pack as I started out with), I decided I'd better keep on running. I'd been slowly working up to running a half mile and was quite proud of myself. On Good Friday, I went running with Petra in the jogging stroller, and after half a mile I felt good enough to continue. After three quarters of a mile I still felt pretty good, so I ran an entire mile (the last eighth mile did start to get painful on my knee and my lungs) in 9:06. I was so proud of myself! I'd been thinking, “Will I ever manage to run an 8 minute mile again? I hope so...” Being able to do it in just over 9 minutes on my first attempt since the accident over a year ago renewed my hope. And hope does not disappoint... On Thursday, without Petra, I ran a mile in 7:50. This, believe it or not, makes me super incredibly bouncily grinnily happy. Praise God for His healing! (With Petra, I've run it in 8:09, but she plus stroller are quite heavy). My legs are still slightly different sizes. The uninjured one is perhaps 3 centimenters greater in thigh circumference because of the muscle mass I lost during the 2 months or so when I couldn't use the left leg, but I'm hoping that running will bring my symmetry back.
Petra wants to catch up with her mommy as fast as possible, as evidenced by her crawling speed. She can zip across the room in no time at all, meaning I need to be vigilant about where she is relative to breakable or gross or otherwise untouchable (by 9-month-olds) items. She follows me around, which can be an exercise in frustration for her if I'm doing something very back and forth, like putting away the laundry. In addition to her mad crawling skills, Petra is working on cruising. She can walk up to 4 or 5 steps while holding on to something like a chair, the outside of the bathtub, or my hands. Usually, though, if she really wants to get somewhere, she'll drop to crawling after a step or two; it's more efficient.
Petra's verbal skills are exploding at a tremendous rate. She has been saying “mama” a good deal, though not consistently relating it to me. For a while she was using it to refer to food of any sort, though that seems to have stopped. It would be nice if she would tell me “mama” or “umm” or sign for milk when she wants it, instead of her current practice: crawling up to me, getting her mouth as close to the desired position as possible, and chomping down as hard as possible, regardless of the intervening t-shirt. I have actively discouraged this, and told her that instead she can sign “milk”, but she has not yet made any discernible sign that I have seen. I sure wish she would! However, her verbal skills are definitely a source of amusement. She razzes with her tongue between her teeth, a disdainful gesture in anyone else but cute in a baby. A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with Jeannette, and Petra was being her effervescent self. She looked straight at Jeannette, said “mama”, then looked at me and said, “phhht.” Gee, thanks. Jeannette and I were laughing so hard! And, today, I finally saw her wave in direct response to another person's wave. She gives the guy who helps with parking where I go to Bible study on Friday mornings a high five, which is also fun, but she only does it for him, which is surprising because she only sees him once a week. I've been actively encouraging her to wave for about a month now, but today she did it on her own initiative. Hooray!
On 7 April, I turned a (gasp!) quarter of a century old. Ari really had fun planning my day. We had cinnamon rolls from Cinnabon for breakfast and pita bread with zatar and olive oil for lunch, and then went to look at the flowers blooming up in the Catalina mountains (the flowers are all gone now; spring is over already). We found a little stream where numerous well-camouflaged frogs sat on the rock walls, and dipped our feet in the water, which even Petra enjoyed. That evening, the 3 of us went to the Macaroni Grill for dinner (Petra shared my pasta) and then we left her with friends and watched a movie. The movie we saw, “The Pacifier,” was clean and funny, and I definitely recommend it. I didn't have a birthday cake, because our oven quit working on Easter Sunday and didn't get fixed for about 4 more weeks. I mentioned the problem to the apartment office on several occasions, so I was more than a little frustrated when, 3 and a half weeks after the oven broke, I told yet another member of the office staff about the problem and asked when it would be fixed, and she said, “Oh, I didn't know it was broken.” However, they sent a guy to fix it on a Friday, and he succeeded. They sent the same guy to fix it the following Monday, so I don't know which of my many requests led to which fix-it attempt, but I was surprised at finding such Middle Eastern organization skills in this supposedly developed country.
Since Petra is now so mobile, our previous sleep strategy now no longer works. I had been letting her sleep next to me while nursing all night long, and although this led to sore nipples some of the time, we all got lots of sleep the rest of the time. However, she took to waking up and making midnight voyages towards the edge of our bed (which Ari made to have drawers underneath as well as extra storage space, so the bed is over a metre high) and I was sufficiently groggy that I didn't feel comfortable with my ability to prevent her plunging head first onto the ground. So we tried letting her sleep in her crib next to the bed when she was done nursing, but she wasn't terribly excited about having us in view but not cuddling her. Finally, I had to admit that the only option was to move her crib into the living room when we go to bed, because that way she gives up fairly easily. I've been intending to slowly cut down on the night-time nursings as well, but frequently this takes more will power than I have at 3 am. However, she now rarely fusses more than a minute when I leave her, fed and dry, in her crib and return to bed. Since a month ago she was nursing all night long (or at least latched on all night long), I'm glad she has adjusted so quickly. Usually, when I put her back down in her crib, she goes right back to sleep without fussing at all. We have such an easy baby!
Other big news this month: Ari finished his book! We threw a party. This reminds me of the joke where a woman is at the supermarket checkout with some fine cheeses and a bottle of champagne. The checkout clerk asks, “Celebrating something?” The woman replies, “My husband finished his book.” The clerk blinks a few times, and then says, “Slow reader?” Well, Ari is certainly not that, nor is he a slow writer, but the book is long. We refer to it as “Karolan” after the fictional country where the epic is set. He started writing Karolan 6 years ago while a sophomore at Caltech, and it is a magnificent tale, with kings and princesses and desperate charges and daring rescues and sword fights and mountain adventures... You should read it when it gets published. And if you're a publisher, you should ask him for a copy. I've been a fan from the moment I picked up the first copy of the first book (it's an epic in 4 books). He's just going to let it sit for a while and then, after it's germinated in the back of his mind for a few months, we'll start editing it and work on finding a publisher.
Well, writing this update has taken me more than a week, so in the interest of it getting posted before Petra's first birthday (!) I'd better quit.
Yet again, I've dawdled on writing an update. Forgive me, please! The anticipated development from last time has occurred: Petra is crawling. This means that she's trouble... She seems to have a particular attraction for things that are gross, so I frequently say things like, “No, Petra, don't chew the potty!” or “Keep out of the recycle bin, please!” or “Oh, my goodness, what is that!” But, because of her increased mobility, she doesn't get as rapidly frustrated, and I'm now able to get more done around the house.
Petra's verbal skills have exploded since last time I wrote. Shortly after I posted, I was in the grocery store when Petra, from the seat of the shopping cart, looked directly at me and announced, “Mamamamama!” I wanted to tell everyone in the store, “She called me mama!” even though I knew the sound was purely experimental at that point. She then proceeded to babble all the way home, combining different consonants, and I think it was only a few days before she said “Dadadadada” for Ari to hear. Not that she connects these sounds with anything, let alone the two of us, but it's still fun. She's started to make a high-pitched squealing noise when frustrated, which I find better than crying except that she often does it when excited as well, and I can't always tell whether she's happy or frustrated. I've also heard her say “ssss”, which is our cueing sound for her to pee, but she doesn't say it with any discernable pattern in relation to when she pees, so it isn't helpful communication yet. Hopefully it will be, though. Actually, she sometimes says it when she's on the potty, and I give her very positive feedback then, so perhaps we'll have her trained before long to cue verbally when she needs to go. That would be convenient!
Now that she's mastered crawling at least to the extent that she can get where she wants to, we're experiencing significant success in terms of potty training. It used to be that we would usually go through at least 3 diapers every early morning; now that number is zero to one most mornings, and afternoons are almost as successful. She has lately been showing a preference for using the big toilet rather than the abhorrently pink potty, which is great – one less receptacle to wash out. I've been using sign language a little bit with her. Just the words for “milk”, “potty”, “sleep”, and “more”. She doesn't sign back yet, but she clearly understands at least “milk” and “potty”. If I sign for potty and she doesn't need to go, she starts fussing immediately. If I sign for milk, no matter whether she's hungry or not she gets excited. If she isn't hungry, she'll nurse for a minute or so and then give a clear, body-language, “Bye, Mom” signal, but she's always happy to have the opportunity. On Tuesday, Petra didn't wet a single diaper (or the floor, or my lap) from the time she woke up until bedtime. We don't do nearly as well at night, given my inability to become completely conscious in time or stay conscious for more than a few seconds.
Just to add more excitement to life, Petra can now pull to standing as well. She practices this new-found skill constantly, particularly in her crib. It makes putting her down for naps or back down in the middle of the night much more interesting, because instead of lying still and fussing for 5 minutes or less and then going to sleep, she twists and squirms and gets into a sitting position, and then stands up and looks around. She can keep herself awake for a half hour or more this way, which means the entire bedroom area is inaccessible for that time because I don't want to enter and give her hope, and frequently I incorrectly conclude that silence means sleep and find her standing, grinning at me, having pulled my pyjamas off our bed or knocked my alarm clock off the crib (where it no longer lives, needless to say). When she does fall asleep, it's from utter exhaustion, and she ends up in some really uncomfortable-looking positions. This morning's was on all fours, face smashed against the crib with the blanket in between face and mattress. She had really intense imprints of the knitted blanket pattern on her face when she woke up after a mere half hour nap or so. I had had her on such a fantastic sleep schedule before, I don't know what to do. I've tried swaddling her, but Petra Houdini Heinze is an expert at unswaddling herself and I haven't figured out anything except her really thick Winnie the Pooh snowsuit that will keep her still enough – and that gets way too hot. Any suggestions are welcome!
For Christmas, Ari gave me a map of Arizona and New Mexico, telling me to choose anywhere on the map for an Ari, Jane, and Petra trip with one night in a hotel, one camping. So we had heaps of fun (we went the weekend before Valentine's Day). On the first day, the Friday, we left rainy Tucson, drove through rainy Phoenix, and went past the Mogollon Rim, a 2000-foot escarpment (units again, but that's what the guide book said), which we couldn't see through the rain. There was snow at the top. We made it to rainy Petrified Forest, which I'd briefly visited when I was in second grade but wanted to see again now that I have more understanding of geology. It was fun to photograph Petra in the now Petra-fied Forest... :-) We held her under our raincoats as we walked around and looked at the tremendous colours in the rocks. We spent the night at a Motel 6 in Gallup. The next day, we had plans to visit Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, NM. Last time I was there, when I was 8, my Grandpa and I had started walking along the trail (a loop trail) and had gotten separated from my parents and Paul, my brother. We'd gone the half of the loop that didn't have any ruins, and they'd gone the half that did, and Grandpa had started making South African bird calls to try to relocate them, when it started to rain. So we hid under a bridge, and Grandpa guessed that the rain would last for 5 minutes. So he had me calculate how many seconds that would be, and count them. The rain persisted, so we counted to 300 a few more times, and then decided that Grandpa's guess was not correct and ran back to the car. So, although it was really fun to spend that time with Grandpa, my previous experience of Bandelier had been lacking, due to rain. So this time, we left rainy Gallup and prayed all the way to Los Alamos. As we were approaching Bandelier, the rain stopped. The clouds started to clear, and we even had sunshine as we explored the tremendously well-preserved Anasazi ruins: cliff dwellings, kivas, and petroglyphs. Petra loved riding on her daddy's back in the Petra-pack my parents got us for Christmas, and was happy just about the entire time. It was beautiful, everything I'd hoped for, and fulfilled the desire I'd had to really see Bandelier since the time in 1988. We even had the chance to climb up to a cave kiva reached by 4 long ladders about a half mile from the main ruins. It was relaxing and interesting and completely worth it. So, that was a tremendous answer to prayer! We took the scenic route back (intentionally), and it snowed on us such that Ari had to be careful about his snow driving. That night, we camped under partially clear skies, back in Gallup (we'd also prayed that we wouldn't have to camp in the rain). The next morning, we decided to try to go to church in Gallup. We stopped on the side of the road for a picnic breakfast, and got stuck in mud. Ari put rocks under the wheels to increase the traction, and when I gunned the engine the rocks flew out: no use! Ari had to push, and fortunately we managed to get back on the road. The church we'd picked from the phone book at the Motel 6 confused us at first, because it met above a pawn shop and looked kind of sketchy, but once we found it, it was a really good church and a fantastic experience. On the way back to Tucson, we went down the Mogollon Rim again, and this time it was completely clear and beautiful! So, the trip was fantastic, and we had several examples of answered prayer. And, I didn't have to change a single diaper: that was Ari's job. What a fantastic man I married!
Lest I neglect to post this /again/, I'd better end here. I think Petra's asleep, but I don't dare check...!
Finally, an update! Fortunately, Petra quit biting me a few days after the last entry, so the sore nipples have cleared up. I'm no longer thinking about weaning her! And her repertoire of solids has increased. She still loves sweet potato and banana, but we've added applesauce and carrots, and tried peas. Avocado wasn't a winner, she made it clear that she disapproved of that, and it seemed to constipate her, so I haven't tried it again. I've added ground up oats to applesauce, and she enjoys that – I think the acid in the applesauce softens the oats and makes them like oatmeal. It's tasty, I've tried it. So, apart from the failed rice cereal attempt, we have purchased no commercial baby food.
We had something of a potty strike a few weeks after we got back from North Carolina, where we were lucky to catch one pee a day. I think it's the change in routine that threw us off. However, I made an effort to relearn Petra's timing, including spending a couple of days trying to write down every time she peed or pooped as well as when she nursed and slept, and this has helped me become better at guessing when she's going to go. Ari is pretty good at taking her, as well – I think he catches almost as many as I do. And, since she's sitting up well, we've graduated her to using a potty in the living room so I don't have to disrupt her from playing when she needs to pee, she can hang onto her toy as I just sit her on the potty. The only drawback is that the potty is pink! I was given it by the lady who organized the baby shower at my church (and I had made it quite clear to her, I thought, that pink is my least favourite colour), along with pink candles, pink loofah, pink fake flowers in a pink glass vase, and pink bowls and baby spoons. I remain baffled, and the thrift store remains a pinker place than it was before, but I kept the baby items deciding that I could squelch the nausea because I'm a cheapskate and don't want to have to buy replacements that aren't pink. So Petra, talented child that she is, now sits by herself on a pink potty. Hopefully, once she's more mobile and agile, she'll be able to move herself to it and use it as long as I keep her nakey butt.
Speaking of mobility, I feel like Petra is about to take off crawling any day now. She moves backward with ease (and frustration). When in a sitting position (with her knees out and her feet together), she leans forward and creeps with her arms to reach something, until her hands and tippy-toes are all that touches the ground. When she's backed up against a wall (which frequently happens), she often ends up with just hands and feet on the ground. And she clearly wants to crawl. Actually, it might be a while yet, because she doesn't really sit on all fours rocking yet, but because not being able to crawl is so frustrating for her, I'm engaging in wishful thinking about when it'll happen. Her increased mobility is dangerous, though. She can move backwards arbitrarily far from either a sitting or face-down position, and can roll over both ways, so just because you leave her several feet from any solid objects doesn't mean she won't be sporting a nasty bruise on her forehead for several days if you look away for a minute. It makes getting things done around the house even more difficult, so if you come and visit, please ignore the dust!
In terms of mobility on a larger scale, the past two weekends we've made two overnight trips to Phoenix. Last weekend, we got to meet a couple who are missionaries in Lebanon, and had a fantastic time talking to them about what they do and what it's like. We even discovered that they know my friends the Hains, whom I met in Jordan, from when they both lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. Small world! Since it was late, we spent the night and drove back on Saturday. This weekend, there was an Arizona-wide missions conference called Take My Life, also in Phoenix. It was Friday night and Saturday morning, and was advertised as a sort of mini-Urbana. Since we didn't make it to the real Urbana a year ago when our car wrapped itself around a tree, it was appealing to us to at least experience a similar, if smaller, event. The keynote speaker was really good, and spoke to us about developing a deep passion for God such that, whatever He asks of us, we say, “Yes.” It resonated with a book I've been reading with my friend Jeannette, “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” That doesn't necessarily mean physical death, though it might. What it means is releasing all your right to direct your own life and make choices without God. As a follower of Jesus, my life is no longer my own; it's His. And if you imagine yourself as selling your life to the highest bidder – family, work, social life, whatever – no matter what those have to offer you, there is no bid on your life higher than God's, who gave His own life for yours. So if you follow Jesus, you follow Him wherever He calls you. I was really challenged to live more single mindedly for Christ, so that I'm so filled with passion for Him that no-one can hold a conversation with me without seeing Him, without the conversation turning to Him, because He's at the center of my life. This isn't something I can do by myself, it requires God's help, so I'm going to try to ask God daily to be at the very center of my life, to enable me to reflect Him.
Petra is such a good traveller! Both weekends, she went to sleep in a new place quite readily, and was friendly, not fussy, around strangers and in new situations. She slept in the car both ways, so we didn't have to deal with a fussy baby while on the interstate. And, this has nothing to do with Petra but I'm proud of myself, I drove back from Phoenix on the interstate last weekend. I had only done freeway driving once since the accident, on the way back from the Caltech Christian Fellowship pre-term retreat in September, in the open desert with hardly any traffic to contend with. This time, I needed to safely merge from the US-60 onto the I-10, and pass a few very slow-moving vehicles, but I did so without even feeling as scared as I'd expected to. I'd been reading in Exodus that morning, about God (in the burning bush) telling Moses to have a little chat with Pharaoh about letting His people go, and the way Moses kept coming with excuses (What if the Israelites don't believe me? How will they know you sent me? I'm not a good public speaker. Make someone else do it!). I thought about how I could keep coming with excuses about freeway driving (I'm not as good at it as Ari. I might mess up again and we could die this time. Ari is willing to drive. I'm too afraid still.) but the answer God gave Moses still holds: “I'm in charge here!” God can keep us safe, even if I'm driving! :-) That helped me feel better about it, and although I didn't drive back this time, I feel better about freeway driving in general.
Oh, oh, oh, let me tell you something very exciting. I CAN RUN A QUARTER MILE! Woo hoo! I am so, unbelievably, incredibly happy about this. I probably look like an idiot, running with the biggest grin on my face, but it's so wonderful to be able to run. I've been pretty good about exercising every day, and somewhat good about going for a walk/run every day, and I'm getting better at it daily. And I can run a quarter mile in 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Every time I run, I'm blown away by the goodness of God for making me able to use my body properly again. No longer do I have to head toward my goal at a calm, sedate pace. Now, in case you were wondering, I still haven't completely sold out to the evil miles/ounces/pints/fortnights measuring system, but unfortunately the path I walk on is marked every quarter mile but not every 100 metres! Sigh. And most of my recipes are in ounces and pints and other similarly frustrating units, so by using them I've (gasp!) become familiar with them. Oh no! I'm being assimilated! Quick, drink 250 mL of water and draw a circle of radius 10 cm! Whew. That'll do it.
Well, I put Petra down for her afternoon nap, and she vehemently disagrees. I can't think straight when she's screaming, so I'm going to end this now. Hopefully she'll give up in the next 5 minutes. She's been on a wacky sleep schedule for the past several days and I'm hoping she'll give it up.
It's been almost a month since I last wrote, and Petra has changed so dramatically! She now has both her bottom front teeth and has, unfortunately, learned too well how to use them. I've had to be quite stern with her when she bites me while nursing. I immediately take her off the breast and speak harshly to her: "No! No biting! Biting hurts! Don't bite Mommy! Biting is bad!" Then I put her on the ground and don't pick her up for a few minutes, and don't feed her again for a few hours. Sometimes this makes her angry and she cries (and, hopefully, makes the connection with having bitten me), sometimes she was done eating anyway and just ignores my tone of voice and plays happily on the floor. When she does this, I just can't stay angry with her; she's too cute! It's easier to nurse my grudge when she's screaming ("Well, you deserve it! Be angry!"), though I forgive her after a minute or two and hold her and comfort her. But as a result of her new biting habit (coupled with a habit of grabbing and pulling at any exposed skin with those increasingly talented hands) I've been fighting sore nipples for the last few weeks. It could be worse, they stop hurting before it's time for the next feeding, but if I'm driving somewhere right after feeding her I need to be careful how I orient the seatbelt.
We started solids, as planned, soon after we got to North Carolina, but Petra does NOT approve of rice cereal. Things were quite chaotic at first, around the time of Dad's graduation, so consistently feeding her solids on a daily basis didn't really happen until just before Christmas. She would take a bite, make a face (not unexpected), gag and choke (unexpected) and then swallow. I guessed that this was just her getting used to the unfamiliar feeling of moving solids around in her mouth. On Christmas Day, we let her partake in Christmas dinner by giving her a bit of sweet potato diluted in water, and the result was completely different. She only made a face the first time, and didn't gag at all, and opened her mouth and waved her hands around in excitement each time she saw the spoon approaching. After a few days of sweet potato, her appetite was increasing, and I didn't prepare quite enough. She became really irate, and I thought it was easier to just mix up a bit more rice cereal than to actively mash and dilute the sweet potato. When she tasted the rice cereal, she reverted to gagging and spat it out. So, sweet potato it was. When we got back to Arizona, I didn't have any sweet potato immediately accessible, but had jars of baby food that someone gave me at a shower, so she tried carrots and banana. Yesterday I fed her real banana - I was eating one, and took a baby teaspoon and scraped the side of it to mash it on the go, and she loved it. So, Petra officially now eats sweet potato and banana. Someone has suggested trying avocado next, which I plan on doing. I don't see any need to try the rice cereal again, since it met with such obvious disapproval. If I feel like it, I might cook real rice and blend it with some of my milk and see if she likes it, but for now I'm not going to bother.
There are so many other skills she's gained, it's hard to keep track. She sits like a champ, and can remove blocks from a box (she was given a box of baby Legos by her uncle Paul). She sings along when someone is singing to her, in tune! Today, in church, one of the ladies played hymns on her harmonica for special music, and Petra chimed in, charming everyone who heard her. During tummy time, she scoots backwards, as much as one Petra length or even more if she is upset (it doesn't seem quite intentional yet). She can almost kneel on hands and knees, which is a precursor to crawling, so I'd guess she'll start actually crawling within the next month or two. She has a lot of different syllables that she can use, though mostly on an experimental basis - no mamamamama or dadadadada yet. She's a real little extrovert, and makes friends with everyone she sees, grinning and cooing at them. And when she wants to be picked up, she lifts her arms and looks at you! Ari and I find it almost impossible to resist! I'm sure there's more she does, but I can't think of it right now.
Our time in North Carolina was fantastic. My dad became Dr. Greenham on 18 December, my Norwegian grandmother's 80th birthday. It was so neat to watch him graduate; he was the only person receiving a Ph.D. in the graduation ceremony, so he was the star of the show! We had his mentor/advisor, Dr. Braswell, and his wife for lunch after the graduation, and then there was a party in the evening, where I stayed for over an hour until I thought I'd scream if I had to meet another new person, so I went upstairs and played monopoly with the other young 'uns (Ari, Paul, and my cousin Che'). My South African grandparents and my cousin Che' had flown out to NC just before Thanksgiving, and it was tremendous fun to hang out with them. I hadn't seen Che' since she was 11 years old, and she turned 15 on this trip, so I barely recognized her. She does some amazing work with abandoned babies at a baby house in South Africa. Some of them have AIDS, some have been found by police in horrible situations and brought to the baby house. Their baby house apparently is equipped to care for 5 or 6 babies, I don't remember exactly, but they have 11 because the need is so great. She tells some really heart-wrenching stories about the babies, and works incredibly hard taking care of them - I think it's two 12-hour shifts a week, I may be wrong. I was so impressed with just how mature and responsible she is for a 15 year old. If she could find the right audience, I bet she could convince lots of people to adopt some of the babies, because she clearly loves them and conveys her excitement in working with them when she talks about them. Ari and I were finding ourselves wanting to adopt one, though it clearly wouldn't be a good idea right now! For all Che's maturity, though, she still managed to be a bit childish at times. Her greatest fun is to point to your chest, ask "What's this?" and then, when you look, flick your nose. She'd catch me three times in a morning! I don't think she got Petra, though. My grandparents were thrilled to meet their great-granddaughter, and I'm really glad they got the chance to. Petra has now met 6 of her 7 living great-grandparents, though we still need to introduce her to her great-great-grandfather in California. Paul, my brother, also had a fantastic time playing with his niece. Petra clearly started to recognize everyone by the end of our time there, and missed them when we returned to Arizona! She was not impressed by having only me to play with and not being able to be held forever.
We were able to meet with all the people we had hoped to meet with during our time in NC. We spent a day in Winston-Salem and hung out with Dani, a friend of mine from 4th and 5th grade, and her husband Owen and her sister Gaia. Dani and Owen are medical students. Stephen Thrasher, a friend from Caltech, came for dinner at our house with his dad a few days after Christmas. And we drove to Washington, DC for New Year, from Thursday to Saturday, and saw a good deal of Pete and Melanie, friends from the GCF who recently moved to DC. We were so proud of ourselves, we got ready to leave in good time on Thursday morning, and had gone just a couple of miles when the clutch on my parents' car, which Paul was driving, failed utterly (through no fault of his). The car would either be stuck in first gear, which made it lurch forward as soon as the engine was turned on, or stuck in neutral, which made it stall out. So it was completely undriveable, and we had to rent a car to get to DC. But get there we did, and saw the Air & Space Museum and the Natural History Museum as well as getting glimpses of the Capitol and the White House on New Year's Eve (the Friday). That evening, we had a New Year's party with Pete and Melanie and some of their friends, as well as Dan and Emily, friends of ours from Caltech. Unfortunately that was all the time we were able to spend with Dan and Emily, we'll have to try to catch up with them again, perhaps when they're in California for Emily's sister's Caltech graduation. We'll see.
Since returning from our vacation, I've decided to seriously pursue getting into shape. Over the vacation, I was able to run a few steps, up to maybe 50 metres, which convinced me that I am magical, made of coloured sprinkles, and can do anything. So I swiped an exercise book I last used about a decade ago and have been going through it - it involves just 12 minutes a day and no special equipment, just empty floor space. And I've been trying to walk a LOT at Ari's suggestion. The path along the river(bed) near our apartment has distances labeled, a fact I had not noticed before, so I've been timing my mile walk speed. On Thursday, it took me 14min, 41sec to walk a mile. On Friday, I shocked myself with 12:45, and on Saturday I improved it to 12:27. And my knee doesn't even hurt at the end of it! I am really pleased, and expect to be jogging in no time.
The only other thing I have to brag about is that Ari and I finally got around to shampooing the living room carpets in our apartment yesterday. This means they are light beige instead of mottled dark beige and grey, and I'm not quite as terrified of Petra learning to crawl. Have I mentioned my intense dislike for wall-to-wall carpet before? It's such a pain to clean, specially with a baby just starting solids and not quite toilet trained! (She's doing about the same on that as last entry, some ups and downs, impressed all our relatives and friends of course).
Well, it's Petra's midnight snack time, so I'd better end this lest the typos accumulate.
Today is Petra's 5-month birthday, and tomorrow we leave for North Carolina. So I'll try to keep this brief (she's napping). She got her first tooth yesterday! Sunday (and several days prior to that, but particularly Sunday) she was utterly miserable, fussing all day and wailing inconsolably if she even lightly tapped her head against anything - which made letting her sit up a risky prospect. I was trying to make butternut soup (I remembered it wrong from Thanksgiving, we had celery soup then, I just remembered that it was good, but I have a tasty butternut soup recipe I hadn't tried) and butternut is a pain to peel, so I couldn't hold her, and Ari was busy writing his book and couldn't do so while she was screaming in his arms, so she spent ages just screaming on the floor. I picked her up once and held her for about 10 minutes until she calmed down, but once I put her down again she freaked out again. Ari thought she needed to learn that she can't be held all the time and that she was just crying to be held and to be willful, so I waited until I couldn't stand it any more and then argued with Ari and picked her up and tied her to my person with a wrap and managed to get some more butternut chopping done while, every so often, her little body was shaken by sobs. I felt so bad for her. Perhaps we should have given her Tylenol, but I didn't think of it until later. I still feel bad about having let her cry for so long, I feel like a miserable mother for not holding her and comforting her better. I feel torn between whether I should have argued with Ari earlier or not. I hate disagreeing with him - I guess I'm spoiled because we usually agree and we get along so well, and I just don't like spending the energy to disagree with someone I love so much. Anyway, the end result of all the pain is that I can now feel a small, hard object in her gum when she chews my finger, which I noticed on Monday morning. It isn't immediately visible, and she doesn't exactly cooperate by saying "Aaah", but perhaps by the time we arrive in North Carolina she'll have a toothy grin instead of a toothless one - and certainly by the time her uncle Paul meets her for the first time. So far my fears about continuing to nurse her once she has teeth are groundless, because her tongue protects me, but I'm afraid of what will happen when she gets her top teeth.
Speaking of butternut soup, once it was finally ready on Sunday afternoon, we put Petra in her high chair (which she was actually okay with, it was after her nap and she felt a bit better) and the way she was watching us eat our soup made me decide to try an experiment. I put a tiny amount of soup on the handle of my spoon, and let her guide it into her mouth. I knew it wasn't a perfect first food, since in addition to butternut and potato it had onion, butter, and cream, but figured I'd take the risk as neither of us have weird food allergies, all the ingredients were at least natural, and butternut was by far the major component. She liked the little bit that I gave her so much that I gave her several more end-of-spoon-fuls and had no bad effects. The way she gulped it down and was eager for more (we did the experiment with nothing on the end of the spoon, and though she mouthed it, she clearly wasn't as enthusiastic as when it had soup on it) makes me feel that we really ought not to hold off on trying solids for much longer. She was able to guide the spoon to her mouth by herself, as well. The doctor said to wait until 5 ½ months, and I'd planned on waiting at least that long, but everything about her screams "ready". Most babies her age can't sit as well as her (she can now easily play with a toy with one hand while sitting, as well as often lifting both hands briefly without falling over). The advice I read that makes the most sense to me doesn't emphasize the baby's age, but says that she should have milk as her only source of nourishment until she's big enough to take food off the table and feed herself. She's there now! So, probably when we're in North Carolina, we'll start her on rice cereal.
I'm really looking forward to our trip to North Carolina. My parents last saw Petra when she was 2 weeks old, and obviously she's changed dramatically since then. Every so often, when I'm on the phone with Mom, she'll ask me to put the receiver to Petra's ear so that Petra can get used to her voice. I don't know if it'll work. My grandparents, my cousin Che', and even my brother Paul have never met Petra, so it'll be really exciting for them. Che' really likes babies, she works with abandoned babies (or AIDS babies, I'll have to ask her) in South Africa in her spare time, so she's looking forward to getting to play with Petra. It'll be interesting to see how Petra compares to the babies Che' spends time with - I'm convinced that just having two loving parents contributes to Petra's growth and development so much, as well as my good nutrition passed on to her. We plan on visiting friends in Washington, DC near the end of the year (exact details will still need to be worked out), Pete and Melanie who used to live in Tucson and now work in DC, and Dan and Emily Grace who are good friends from Tech and live in Princeton but can plan to visit their brother in DC while we're there. Another friend from my elementary school days, Dani, lives with her husband in Winston-Salem, which is just 2 hours away from Wake Forest, so although I don't know exactly when we'll come to visit them, we certainly have every intention of seeing them. Also, Stephen Thrasher, another friend from Tech, is from North Carolina, so we may get to see him too. It'll be busy! My dad's graduation is on Saturday, he'll officially be a Ph. D. I'm so proud of him!
Well, I heard cute little noises from the other room, so I'd better take care of Petra and post this!
Gracious sakes, it's been ages since I last posted! And ever so
much has happened. Petra can now sit unsupported and stand holding on to
things. It's fun to watch her enjoying the world from her new vantage
point. She sits with her hands supporting much of her weight, and is still
quite wobbly, but she can sit indefinitely. She typically tumbles when she
sees something she wants to investigate and lifts her hands to grab for
it, though occasionally she can briefly lift her hands, put them down
again and remain sitting. She certainly has the reach-grab-pull-mouth
motion down pat. I remember when she was a month old, seeing a
five-month-old adeptly handling and mouthing a rattle and struggling to
imagine Petra that coordinated; now she is. Of course, this means that
going shopping with her is ever so much fun. It's like strapping an
octopus to my person. I have to be constantly vigilant that she doesn't
pull things off shelves or clothing racks. And she's too young to
understand "no"! Petra enjoys tummy time more than she used to, though she
still can't escape from it by rolling onto her back. She can push her
chest off the floor with her arms, or lift her head to look at and chew on
the object she's examining with her hands. However, And this child kicks like a champ. Socks are a hopeless cause, except
the ones I specially designed for her and intend to improve with a
drawstring. Since I like to keep her diaper-free when we're home (and,
therefore, pants-free as well), it's a challenge to keep those little legs
warm while keeping our electric bill low. So I modified a socks pattern I
found online to reach her knees, tapering out along her fat little calf
and then narrowing dramatically just below the knee. The result is that it
takes about 10 minutes for her to kick them off, instead of the usual two
with her other knitted socks. So, at home, she typically wears a hat,
long-sleeved shirt or sweatshirt, and her knee socks. If I'm worried about
it still being too cold for her, I usually put her in a cloth diaper
without a cover.
Petra experienced her first snow, and then some, the weekend before
Thanksgiving, at the same time as I experienced my first real snowstorm
that I consciously remember. We went on the Caltech Christian Fellowship
rag retreat, as is our tradition. Rag retreats have really been a
significant positive influence in both our lives while we were at Caltech
and even after graduating, so we always make an effort to go. They're
typically at a YMCA campsite and last from Friday night to Sunday morning.
So we left Tucson on Friday morning and drove to where the retreat was
being held, arriving before everyone else because Petra was a better
traveler than we expected. Friday night was beautifully clear, and the
weather reports predicted a sunny weekend. Saturday was fun, I went on a
hike with about 10 others while Ari stayed in the cabin writing and taking
care of Petra. It was quite cold, but clear. Then, after sunset, it
started to snow. Saturday evening is when we do the rag ceremonies,
ceremonies representing people's new commitments to following God more
closely that take place on a mountaintop about 20 minutes' walk (in good
conditions) from where we stay. Typically we blindfold the people who are
taking rags (making commitments) near the top of the hill, but this time
there was no need, besides the fact that it would have been lunacy to do
so. The ceremonies are printed out on several pages, but conditions were
so bad that the pages were freezing together. There's an emblem on top of
the hill, but it was completely covered in snow and we had to trace it
with our feet between ceremonies for it to be visible at all. I doubt
we've ever done rag ceremonies in worse weather conditions. Needless to
say, I left Petra down the mountain with Ari, as she was happy to sleep
and not freezing her was clearly the better way.
Well, after the rag ceremonies were over, it continued to snow. By
Sunday morning, there was over a foot of snow, with no sign of it letting
up. Clearly, all cars would need snow chains to get down, so there was no
chance of an early morning departure. Bing, the social director, and some
of the YMCA staff went into town to obtain snow chains for all the cars.
It took them until 4pm, because apparently everyone and his older brother
wanted to buy snow chains, and the roads were a nightmare. When they got
back, it was about an hour before sunset, and the situation was as
follows: There are three roads down the mountain, two major roads and a
back road. One of the major roads was closed due to a rockslide. The other
was closed due to a 50-car pileup. The back road, sketchy even without
snow, was not recommended for people without snow driving experience. Once
the sun set, whatever had melted during the day would freeze, rendering
the back road even more dangerous. So, we were snowed in! It was heaps of
fun, and almost everyone had a really good attitude about it. On Sunday
evening, we had a talent show, one of the highlights of which was
Brandon's Thanksgiving song: "White meat, dark meat, take your pick - the
snow on my car is ten feet thick…" "Thanksgiving is a special night - Jon
Gardner could use some dynamite…" The dynamite reference came from a
Western-themed card game, "Bang!", in which Jon Gardner had apparently
been blown up by the dynamite card a few too many times. Monday morning,
it wasn't snowing as hard, but the icicles from the roof were as low as
the snow was high, approximately knee deep (or mid-thigh, if you're Anne,
or head if you're Petra). It was utterly gorgeous! We finally managed to
get down on Monday afternoon, when the major routes had been cleared of
their rockslide and pileup. There were some complications with one car
taking chains a bit too big for it, leaving another car behind with chains
much too small for it, requiring another dash into town, but eventually it
all worked out. Ari drove 80mph all the way back to Tucson, because the
faster we drove, the less tired he'd be towards the end of the drive. The
last half hour or so was almost psychedelic, as I was almost asleep but
trying to keep Ari awake. I'd ask him a question, and he'd talk in
response to keep himself alert enough to drive safely while I dozed, half
aware of what he was saying, and then ask a completely irrelevant
subsequent question. We were close enough to Tucson by that stage that we
didn't want to stop at a motel, and we arrived home at 1am.
So we didn't spend that much time back in Tucson before leaving for
Thanksgiving in Houston. We left on Wednesday morning and returned on
Monday morning. Thanksgiving dinner was with Ari's grandparents in Bryan,
TX. There were us, Ari's parents, his brother Dar, his aunt Susan, uncle
Steve and cousin Sarah, and another family I hadn't met before, for a
total of 15 people (only 14 of whom actually ate the feast, though all 15
enjoyed it). Petra had fun investigating how adeptly she could guide a
spoon into her mouth, though there was nothing in the spoon. Her
great-granddad was itching to feed her, but we haven't started her on
solids yet. When we do, though (or, heck, way before then), I want
the recipe for the butternut soup we had. On Friday, we went over to the
Kipps' house for dinner and a movie after they watched a football game in
which the Aggies, for whom everyone there was cheering, lost. Petra got to
dance to the Aggie fight song with her great-aunt Susan, as they turned up
the volume of the fight song to drown out the sounds of the Aggies losing
on the TV. I'm not a devoted fan of any particular team or sport - I
usually have to ask, say, "What sport do the Redskins play?", but Ari's
family contains numerous A&M alumni, so it's predetermined that we'll
cheer for them if anyone - Caltech doesn't have a football team. We prefer
to pronounce that, "Caltech hasn't lost a football game in 20 years," but
it's the same thing. On Saturday, we walked along the Buffalo Bayou for
about 2 or 3 miles to a restaurant where we had lunch, and then worked up
a corresponding appetite on the way back for Thanksgiving dessert
leftovers. Saturday evening, we left beautifully sleeping Petra with her
Oma and Opa, and went to see The Incredibles with Ari's brother Dar. It
was truly a high quality movie, and I recommend it to anyone - kiddies
too. Yay for movies that leave you feeling entertained and not dirty after
you watch them. Also yay for grandparents who are willing to babysit! That
afternoon everyone but me and Petra had gone to buy a Christmas tree (I
needed a nap, as did Petra), so when we got back from the movie we
decorated the tree and ate Momma's good cookies. On Sunday, we had lunch
at a fantastic Indian restaurant with Hannah Kipp, and then the Salcedos
came over to meet Petra. So we got to see a number of good friends as well
as family during our time in Texas. It was really a fantastic vacation -
and in less than a month's time, we're off again, to North Carolina this
time, where we'll see not only my immediate family, but my grandparents
and cousin Che' from South Africa. My dad is graduating, which is also
exciting.
On Monday, after we'd returned, Petra had her 4-month doctor's visit.
She is now, officially, 16 pounds 10 ounces and 27 ½ inches long: 90th
percentile in weight and way off the charts in height. So, people aren't
on crack when they tell us we have a tall baby. She also had her second
round of immunizations, which was hard but she didn't cry as long this
time as when she was 2 months old. It only took about 30 seconds after
they were done for her to stop crying, so I hugged her and told her what a
brave girl she was. If she were old enough, I'd buy her an ice cream, but
for now, hugs will have to do.
Yesterday, at mom/baby group, Petra got in her first tug-of-war. She
was playing with a rattle, and another baby, a month and a half older than
her, saw it and waxed covetous. The two of them each had a grip on the
rattle, and the other mother and I just watched to see what would develop.
The older baby won, but only after about two minutes of Petra holding her
own. She didn't seem terribly upset - I think she still harboured hopes of
grabbing it back from him - and then the other baby's mother offered her
one of his toys. He didn't notice, being sufficiently distracted by
Petra's rattle, so there was peace, as each investigated the other's
property. I guess the concept of "mine" hasn't really developed yet, which
is good, but when it does I'll have to keep a beady eye on my child!
Oh, look at me - I've written pages again! But this time I had a good
excuse. Well, I'd better stop now, or I never will.
This week was harder than last, because Petra seems to be teething. At
least, I can't think of another explanation for the fact that half the
nights this week she woke up about 4 times and half the days this week
she's been randomly fussy when not tired, hungry or wet and it's taken
great pains to soothe her. Occasionally she seems to be soothed by gnawing
on my finger, but not always - sometimes it seems to make it worse. Last
night she woke up 4 times between 6:20pm and 6:20am, but I'm feeling quite
satisfied as she woke up in the same dry diaper she fell asleep in and I
caught all 4 pees during the times she woke up. Nonetheless, I have every
intention of napping next time she does! I sure hope those teeth come in
soon, assuming that's the problem.
Petra has become quite adept at rolling from her back to her tummy, but
once she's there she's stuck! We haven't yet been able to teach her to
roll from her tummy to her back, and her inability to do so frustrates her
immensely. I'll put her down on her back, she'll roll to her tummy, be
content for somewhere between 2 seconds and a minute, start fussing, I'll
roll her back to her back, she'll stay there somewhere between 2 seconds
and a minute, and she'll roll back again, over and over again. I bought
her a few rattles last Thursday, one of which has a mirror, and they can
amuse her when she's on her tummy or distract her when she's on her back
for a minute or so, but no longer. Sometimes I leave her on her tummy for
a minute, fussing, in the hopes that eventually she'll figure out how to
roll back over again, but I try not to let her get too frustrated.
I'm even more pleased than last week with the success of "diaper free".
I've actually found it to work best when she's in cloth without a cover,
so that's what I'm doing at night now. I can instantly see if she's wet,
and it isn't as much of a pain as taking the cover and the diaper off as
well as any pants she's wearing. Petra hates being wet, so she'll fuss and
squirm if she needs to pee while in a diaper, whereas if she's nakey butt
just lying on a diaper she'll let it go. I think keeping her bare bottomed
at first was necessary, though, just to get her to the stage of enjoying
being dry and disliking being wet. Several days this week, I've caught
every pee in the afternoon. I'd rate my success as catching about 70% of
poops throughout the day, 30-50% of pees in the morning, and 70-90% of
pees in the afternoon and at night. Are most Western 2-year-olds that well
potty trained? Petra's not yet 4 months… Yay for challenging widely held
cultural assumptions!
On Saturday, we went with about 7 other people on a hike to Finger
Rock, a prominent feature in the Santa Catalina mountains to the north of
most of Tucson. They were all other people from the GCF, and apart from
Petra and me the only other girl was Janine. You hike up the ridge
opposite Finger Rock and then cut across the valley to get to the actual
rock. The hike up the ridge is strenuous, the cut across the valley even
more so, and given how my knee hurt after climbing Mt. Wrightson, I
decided not to attempt the cut across the valley. When we reached the top
of the ridge, I turned back, and Janine was willing to accompany me (and
Petra) back down the mountain. All the guys went to the base of Finger
Rock, but weather (strong wind and the beginnings of rain) prevented them
from climbing to the top of it. Janine and I went back to Ryan and
Janine's house and had toasted cheese and hot chocolate and watched a
movie. Then, when the guys got back, the 4 of us had dinner together. A
most satisfactory Saturday! And, since I'd been sensible, my knee was
tired but not painful. Now I can't feel it at all.
(Baby care dictates that I pick this up again on Tues 9 Nov) Last
night, Ari finished building his binocular telescope, so we used it to
look at the Orion nebula and the Pleiades. They were magnificent! The
binocular telescope is basically two 8-inch telescopes, one for each eye.
It doesn't magnify objects the way his other regular 8-inch telescope
does, which means that the whole nebula or open cluster fits in the field
of view. It'll be nice to be able to take it somewhere dark; the lights of
our apartment complex got in my eyes when I was looking at the Pleiades.
It's really a 2-person machine; it's ridiculously hard for a single person
to manoeuvre because you sit in it, so to turn it you need to move both
the mass of the telescope and your own mass. And as far as carrying the
components between our apartment and wherever it's going to be set up,
that's Ari's job!
I plan on going to mom/baby group at the birth center again today. Last
week Petra weighed 15 pounds, 10 ounces, so we'll see what she weighs this
time. She's getting to be one of the older babies in the group, and it's
fun to realize just how much she's grown and developed in the less than 4
months we've had her. Well, in the interest if this getting posted today,
I'd better shut up!
We're back from St. Louis! We got back on Monday evening. Our time with
Ari's grandparents was wonderful; we spent a lot of time with them and got
to see many of his other relatives as well. In particular, we went hiking
with his Uncle Tom again (I went hiking with Ky and Dar and Uncle Tom last
time I was in St. Louis) and got to meet Dar's girlfriend Michelle. She
won our complete approval: I want her for a sister! It was such fun to get
to see Ruthie and Ben and Anna, as well. We spent Sunday the 17th at the
St. Louis zoo, and enjoyed the penguin exhibit. It's fun how, with good
friends, it doesn't matter if you haven't seen them in 5 years; you can
pick up right where you left off.
While in St. Louis, I made no attempt whatsoever to do the diaper free
thing with Petra. I felt like with so many people wanting to hold her,
even having her without a cover but with a cloth diaper would have been
too complicated. Plus, I imagined having to explain the concept to
everyone we met and decided it was too much trouble. I told myself, "Using
cloth is weird enough!" But I felt bad not being able to pay as much
attention to her hygiene needs as I do at home, and hated changing each
poopy diaper. One morning, I was really tired and she wanted to get up at
7am, and I'd been too tired to change her when she woke up at 3am, so I
just handed her to Grandma at 7am (they get up early) and went back to
sleep. At about 9am, Grandma came in, asking for a clean diaper to change
her. I felt so guilty, having let her sit in a wet one for hours! Grandma
tried to tell me not to worry, since she had absolutely no diaper rash.
But at this point, I've had enough of a paradigm shift that I'm not
changing her frequently to avoid diaper rash. I'm changing her frequently
so she doesn't have to sit in her own wastes and doesn't get desensitized
to the feeling of being wet due to having to ignore it for hours at a
time. For an adult, conventional diapering would be considered torture,
and so I'm no longer able to stand doing it to my baby. I was actually
pretty glad to get home, so I could start letting Petra be diaper free
again. And, things are going even better now than they were before. I'm
catching many pees a day, as well as about the same number of poops. And,
yesterday, she actually peed in a public restroom! I was so proud of her.
I'd gone to be fingerprinted for my green card application, and she
started napping on the way there and woke up while they were busy trying
to get the fingerprinting machine to work (it's high tech, with lasers and
a moisture sensitive glass screen instead of ink, and they'd just gotten
them 2 days ago). She started fussing, and because I was being
fingerprinted I couldn't pick her up, but I knew she was upset because she
doesn't like peeing in her diaper and she always needs to after a nap. So
I figured she'd eventually be unable to hold it and go in her diaper,
since it was clearly going to take at least another 5 minutes. Once I was
done, I even took 5 minutes to briefly feed her (since she was making
hungry signs as well), and then went to change her. But her diaper was dry
when I got there - poopy but dry. So I held her over the toilet, made a
"tsss" sound, and she went. She must have held it for at least 10 minutes!
I am so, so very impressed. Now I know it's a lie that babies can't
hold their pee. Silly toilet training myths. If it weren't for the other
people in the Yahoo group for Natural Infant Hygiene, I would think my
child the most brilliant, precocious baby in the world!
Of course, "diaper free" is a bit of a misnomer, since I still use
diapers exclusively when we go out and I lay her on diapers or have her
sit on them in my lap when we're at home and I'm not expecting her to pee
or poop imminently (because she frequently thwarts my expectations). I
think the explanation of the concept in Ingrid Bauer's book "Diaper Free"
is really good: "To me, diaper free means to be free of the complete
reliance on diapers, to be free to choose, to have the baby be free in
their movement, to be free of the expense, the pollution, and the reliance
on a substitute for a parent's presence. In Natural Infant Hygiene, we are
free to see the value of going diaper-less, and we are also free to
recognize when diapers are practical." I find diapers to still be
practical when we go out, even briefly, because I don't feel confident
enough to catch all her pees (she still doesn't signal very obviously) and
it would stress me out to be always worrying about the carseat getting wet
or friends getting peed on. But I've started (being somewhat adventurous)
trying to be brave enough to let her be diaper free when she sleeps - I've
got waterproof pads in the diaper area of the crib, covered by a large
diaper, which tends to catch all the pee. Typically at night, we put her
to bed in her crib and she sleeps there until 3am. Then she wakes up to
eat (the crib is right next to my side of the bed, it's almost a
co-sleeper) and I move her to our bed and let her lie next to me as she
eats. This way I, at least, can sleep while she eats, and she nods off to
sleep again easily. I hardly get roused from sleep at all that way. So my
new endeavour leads to my getting roused from sleep a bit, as I have to
arrange the waterproof pads and diaper under her and me before I move her
to our bed, so that when she pees the diaper, and not our sheets, will
catch it. But occasionally, she doesn't pee from the time she goes to
sleep till the 3am feeding. The book "Diaper Free" says that babies rarely
pee in deep sleep - it's when they're waking up that you have to watch out
- and I've found this to be true. So, if I'm not awake in the morning when
Petra begins to stir, I sometimes get peed on if she's close to me, but I
can just wipe it off with the diaper which catches what my leg doesn't,
and then take a shower during her next nap. As you can tell, this method
involves being somewhat relaxed about being peed on! During naps, Petra
sleeps in her crib on the diaper plus waterproof pads. And often, I don't
have to replace the diaper between naps, because I just have to be
attentive enough to pick her up and take her to pee as soon as she wakes
up and the crib diaper stays dry.
Petra has rolled over once more since 2 weeks ago, and this time she
looked less confused and more satisfied. She did it back here, not in St.
Louis, and I'm wondering if diaper free is responsible for that as well.
I've read that babies who don't wear diapers reach certain developmental
milestones earlier than diapered babies just because they don't have to
negotiate all that bulk between their legs. She's also reaching for things
much more determinedly, and has better aim. If I hold an object within her
reach, half the time she's able to grab it. And once it's in her hand,
she's able to pass the object from one hand to the other, though it
doesn't seem quite intentional yet. And she laughs! Not often, but they're
recognizable as laughs. At first I wasn't sure if it was a new type of
cry, but she seemed way too happy for that, and it always seems to be in
response to something unusual, like the crocheted butterflies that we
still haven't made into a mobile over her crib but have hung from the
ceiling, or a weird face I'm making. It's so much fun! She's also able, on
occasion, to stand in my lap propped against my shoulder. This usually
happens if she's unhappy, which seems to make her tense her legs and be
able to bear her weight on them, but sometimes she does it when she's just
excited. It's so neat to see her develop - Petra is more fun every day.
We've also (heaves sigh of relief and satisfaction) got her on a pretty
regular sleeping schedule. At the mom/baby group I've been going to at the
birth center, one of the women bragged that, after reading a certain book,
she'd been putting her baby (a month older than Petra) to bed at 6:30pm
and he'd been sleeping until 6am. All the other moms said, practically in
one voice, "What book is it? We want!!!" So she told us: it's "Healthy
Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Weissbluth. So after a few weeks of her
telling us this (I tend to be reluctant to spend money) I went to
Bookman's and obtained a used copy. The basic premise is that babies have
two tired modes. They go from being happily awake to drowsy, and drowsy is
a good time to put them to sleep. But if you miss out on the drowsy phase,
the baby goes into "overtired", when she starts to release a chemical that
keeps her awake even though she is tired. If you try to put her to sleep
then, she'll get really unhappy and scream, because she needs to wind
down. So the best way to get baby to sleep well is to put her down for
naps and bedtime before she gets overtired. For a baby Petra's age, he
says she should be sleeping after having been awake for just an hour or
two, so that means frequent naps all day long. And she should be going to
bed just after sunset (before 7pm), and sleeping through (with occasional
wakes for feeding) until sunrise: 6 or 7 am. Which means an earlier
bedtime for me, so I can be awake that early. But this is quite
acceptable, because Ari and I have been able to have romantic dinners
alone, and spend the evening together without having to console a fussy,
overtired baby. When we put her down at around 6:30pm, she fusses as soon
as she realizes that we (gasp!) actually intend to leave her alone to
sleep, but rarely goes on complaining for more than 5 minutes after we've
left her. And then she sleeps, almost always solidly until 3am! She has a
constant 3am feeding time, but then continues sleeping (usually) until her
6 or 7am wake up time. And I'm loving it! I have alone time during the day
(regular naps) during which I can get the house clean, and take showers,
and read my Bible, and I have romantic time with Ari every evening! So, I
strongly recommend this book to everyone whose baby seems to be erratic in
her sleep schedule. Well, she's napping now, so I'd better take advantage
of it and post this!
We have a little mover and shaker! Today, her 3-month birthday, Petra
rolled from her back to her tummy for the first time. It seemed to confuse
her somewhat ("How did I get here?") but now she's trying to do it again,
with a degree of persistence that is quite amazing. I've been accompanying
her attempts with humming the melody of "Rawhide", because her desire is
clearly to be "Rollin', rollin', rollin!" I can't remember all the words,
but then it's been a while since I stood in Blacker courtyard at the end
of Rotation with all my fellow Moles, yelling the words… Sometimes I miss
Tech. Anyway, in her attempts to roll over, Petra consistently rolls onto
her left side and squirms, which takes her a good distance. Since I put
her down half an hour ago, she's rotated about 330 degrees from her
starting position with her head at the origin, more or less. She's also
started swinging at things. I have these "lively links", colourful plastic
chain links that I hang from a chair so they're above her face. She has
waved her hands at them (intentionally, it seems) and succeeded in hitting
them a few times, which amuses her.
Since I last wrote, Petra started and subsequently stopped biting me
while nursing. She doesn't have any teeth yet, fortunately, but toward the
end of a feeding she would slow down her sucking and then CHOMP all of a
sudden with her gums. Of course, my response was to yell, "Ow!" and take
her off, declaring the feeding to be over. After this happened a few
times, I looked in one of my books for advice, and it reassured me that
not only was my response exactly right, but that biting should only last a
few days. It also suggested that biting may be a result of teething, which
would also explain her chewing her fingers more. But it takes a while for
the teeth to cut all the way up through the gum, so we may not see any
teeth for a few months yet. I hope.
I'm still quite satisfied with the "diaper free" concept, and I feel
we're slowly making progress. I now catch about half her poops and one or
two pees a day, which is a vast improvement over the first few weeks I
tried it, when I didn't always catch anything on a given day. I feel like
we'll probably keep on making slow but steady progress - I have a better
sense of her timing now. Frequently we'll come home from a short outing
with her wearing the same dry diaper she left in because I time our
outings for when she's just gone. Then, once we return, I offer her the
opportunity to go on the potty and she often does. I think she's beginning
to become reluctant to go in her diaper, and is able to hold it for a
little while (not very long) so that she waits until I get it off her
before she goes. I'm really impressed, because you hear that babies under
2 years old aren't physically able to wait but clearly they are. It's just
a misconception, probably propagated by manufacturers of disposable
training pants for 4-year-olds! Babies are smarter than we think.
We had a really busy weekend. On Saturday, there was a conference in
Phoenix for budding Christian leaders sponsored by Phoenix Seminary. So we
got up super early in the morning and carpooled there (with other friends
from the GCF). There were three sessions where you could choose between 4
topics, so Ari and I went to different ones to try to cover more ground.
Although Petra fussed some so I missed parts of all of them, I enjoyed the
ones I attended: a talk by Wayne Grudem on our emotional and ethical
response to certain attributes of God, and a two-part talk by a woman
whose name I don't remember on helping people to overcome unbiblical
shame. The best part, though, was entirely by chance (probably more
accurately pronounced "providence"). A couple who work at Frontiers, an
organization doing ministry among Muslims all over the world, had been in
contact with us and just happened to be at the conference. We were able to
have lunch with them and discuss our ideas for how God might use us in the
future. We really had a blast meeting them; they were really neat people.
On Sunday, we went hiking with Joel and Jeannette after church. We
actually played hooky from Sunday School in order to start earlier. Our
intention was to climb Mt. Wrightson, and we made it almost all the way to
the top. On our way up we saw a bear! Joel was carrying Petra in the sling
(everyone got a turn to carry her, for the general saving of backs), so
she didn't see it, which was fine by me because I didn't want the bear to
notice her either. I hadn't known there were bears in this area, but
apparently there are. It was late (sunset) when we got to a saddle
overlooking probably as much as we would have seen from the top, and Petra
started fussing. We thought it might be the altitude, as it was over 9000
feet, so we didn't proceed to the top, and we started down as soon as the
sun had set. By this time my knee was starting to let me know how
unimpressed it was with my conduct, so I let Ari carry Petra. We used the
sling on the way up, but on the way down used a wrap - an idea I found at
www.mamatoto.org and which impressed me a lot. Basically, you use a long
sheet of material and it allows you to carry your baby in various
positions. I bought 5 ½ yards of purple cloth at Jo Ann's and used it to
distribute Petra's weight over my shoulders and waist. It really would
have worked for a while if my knee hadn't been giving trouble, and it did
work for the rest of the way down for Ari. He kept her warm by putting his
sweater on over her. Poor kid, when we were changing her diaper at the
top, she was so cold her little chin quivered. I put her in a footed
pyjama with a onesie on top, and that together with being under Ari's
sweater kept her warm enough. It was the longest hike we'd done since the
accident, so it's not surprising my knee hurt. I was limping by the end of
it, and my knee hurt all Monday, but now it's fine again.
Next week, we'll be in St. Louis visiting Ari's grandparents. We leave
Saturday and get back on Monday the 25th. Ari's brother Dar will also be
there with his girlfriend Michelle, who we haven't met yet; they're on
fall break. And, in an awesome coincidence (also better pronounced
"providence"), my friend Ruth, her husband Ben, and her sister Anna will
all be in St. Louis on Saturday and Sunday. Ruthie and Ben live in
Springfield (I think) where they go to school, and Anna lives in Nebraska,
so the fact that they just happen to be all in St. Louis at once while
we're there is just awesome! Ruth was a bridesmaid at our wedding, but I
didn't get to spend much time with her then, and I've never met Ben, and I
last saw Anna in 1999 when she was 13! It's hard to believe that she's
graduated from high school now. I'm so excited to get to see so many
people so soon. And, of course, show off little Petra. Yippee!
Petra is currently lying on the floor, with a rattle in her hand,
attempting to eat the hand that is holding the rattle. She can't yet grab
for items intentionally, but if I place something in her hand, she can
hold it for a while - several minutes, sometimes. Anything that gets put
in her hand goes automatically to her mouth, just as her empty hands go
automatically to her mouth. I think this is part of the process of her
finding her hands - she can bring her fists together now, and I think her
mouth is at this point her chief means of finding out about the world.
She's also picked up the habit of, when wearing a t-shirt, grabbing the
bottom of it and tasting that, revealing her exceedingly cute belly. She
can (and just did) roll from her back onto her side, which she's been able
to do for a good long time, but it really looks as if she'll roll onto her
tummy pretty soon. She just needs to figure out what to do about the arm
on the bottom and how to unbend her legs, and she'll have it. When she is
on her tummy, she can raise herself off the floor on her elbows and look
around, with her head at 90 degrees from the floor. This helps her enjoy
tummy time a good deal more. She kicks her legs wildly but (fortunately)
can't crawl yet - I'm glad, because I'm so not ready to childproof the
apartment. Petra's current penchant for chewing her hands and whatever is
in them has made it more difficult to tell when she's really hungry and
when she's just playing. A month ago, it was a sure sign of hunger, but
now she'll try to taste her hands in the middle of a feeding, or
immediately after. It can be interesting, to try to hold both her hands
away from her mouth and get her latched on again, since I myself am only
equipped with two arms that are also occupied with holding Petra.
Apparently, though, my milk is doing its job. Her 2-month checkup
(though she's 2 ½ months old at this point) was on Tuesday and she weighed
in at a whopping 14 pounds naked. The doctor showed us how much muscle she
has in her legs (I could have told you that, she kicks all the time!) and
said that breastfed babies tend to be more muscular. Formula fed babies
might look the same, but it'll be fat instead of muscle. The checkup was
also the time that Petra received her immunizations. We now have
additional reassurance that if anything is really wrong in Petra's life,
she'll let us know - and then some! Poor kid, she got stuck 4 times: DTaP,
HepB/HibB, IPV (polio) and pneumococcal. We hadn't heard of the
pneumococcal before, but after interrogating the doctor and finding that
it could prevent some ear infections (which I had a lot of as a kid), we
decided it was worth it. We'd elected not to start the Hep B cycle at
birth, because it is only transmitted the same way as AIDS is, and since I
know I don't have it, she has no way of getting it. But it was a
combination shot with the Hib B (Hemophilus B), another required
immunization, so it would have been more trouble to make them go back and
get one without the Hep B in it. Plus, it's probably wise to immunize her
at some point, and this way she'll never remember it (though we will!).
Poor kid, she was completely unsuspecting as we held her still and I
stroked her forehead. Then, when the first needle went into her leg, she
turned pure crimson and shrieked inconsolably. As the torture continued,
she actually produced real tears, the first time I've seen her do so. I
felt so bad for her, that we couldn't explain to her why this was
happening and why both her parents were complicit in the ordeal. But,
having weighed up the relative risks and benefits (and the fact that we
plan, someday, on living in more 'interesting' parts of the world),
immunization makes sense - particularly now that they no longer include
mercury preservatives in the vaccines. I know some people are
anti-immunization, but when you think about how it actually rid the world
of smallpox and looks set to do the same thing with polio, it seems clear
that the very small risks are far outweighed by the great benefits for the
world as well as just individuals. On the other hand, we did manage to
avoid having the eye ointment smeared in her eyes at birth. It was
supposed to prevent blindness caused by gonorrhea in the mother, so we
knew it wasn't necessary and the Birth Center let us sign a paper and she
didn't have to have it (although it's officially state law that all babies
get it, I'm not sure how that works).
For the past month off and on, and more regularly for the past two
weeks or so, I've been keeping Petra diaper free when we're home, just
lying on a cloth diaper with a changing pad or lap pad between the diaper
and whatever she's lying on. This is something of an experiment with a
concept I've heard about from several sources, most of which are reliable.
When I was about 6 months pregnant with Petra, Carol Rutt, a friend from
church who used to be a missionary to Nigeria, told me about how mothers
there care for their babies. Apparently they carry their babies naked,
strapped to their backs with a cloth, and when the baby needs to pee they
just take the baby down, sit him on their feet and let him pee in the
dirt. I'd seen women in South Africa with babies strapped to their backs,
but assumed they were diapered. I figured these Nigerian women must get
peed on a lot, but according to Carol, they were pretty good at knowing
exactly when the baby needed to go. I filed this information under,
'interesting, but would never work in the USA (or anywhere with carpets)'.
Then, a little while later, my mom told me about a friend of hers from
Kazakhstan who sits her 9-month-old baby on the toilet after each meal
"and the child performs!" I'd assumed that any attempt at early toilet
training like that must be coercive and damaging, but this didn't sound
that bad. So when I stumbled upon www.diaperfreebaby.com in the 9th month
of my pregnancy, I didn't immediately dismiss it as a bunch of crackpots,
but took time to read some of the articles and testimonials. My interest
piqued, I bought the book "Diaper Free!" to find out more. The general
idea is that, contrary to popular belief, babies are able to communicate
their elimination needs from birth, just as they're able to communicate
that they're hungry, tired, or cold. If you can tune in to your baby's
signals, you can hold her over an appropriate receptacle when she needs to
go, and eventually not need to depend on diapers. This doesn't mean that
you live in a house that reeks of pee and just let the baby go wherever
she wants - hence me putting Petra on a diaper and paying attention that
she stays there (those little legs are pretty adept at kicking it out of
the way). I'm starting to notice some patterns. She almost always needs to
pee when she wakes up from a nap, and in the morning when she wakes up
after her long sleep of the night she invariably needs to poop a lot
(hence last Saturday's festivities - see last week's entry). Often she
pees while nursing, and poops then as well (which involves some dexterity
with holding a diaper or potty under her naked rear while holding her in a
nursing position). She also tends to look like she's concentrating when
she's about to poop, and she'll quit wriggling for a few seconds when
she's about to pee. For the past several days, I've caught about 2 pees
and 2 poops a day. Every time I notice her going, I make a cueing sound:
"tsss" for pee and "ush" for poop. Eventually, she ought to associate the
sound with the sensation of going, and when I sense she'll soon need to
go, I'll be able to hold her over a potty or the toilet and cue her and
she'll release it. Presumably that's how it works for my mom's Kazakh
friend. Petra seems to be beginning to understand what I mean, at least
when I say "ush," which is encouraging. Some of the people who do this
(I've seen it called various things: elimination communication, natural
infant hygiene, infant potty training) say that you can quit using diapers
altogether after a while, and I've seen a few sites selling infant-sized
training pants (since stores don't sell them smaller than size 2T), though
I think it'll be a while before I get that confident, if I ever do.
Nonetheless, it's starting to reduce our use of diapers, and I'm enjoying
the fact that Petra doesn't have to sit in her own wastes for any amount
of time. With regular diapering, I felt bad about how the poop would
squish all over - it can't have been comfortable for her, and it was a
pain for me to clean. This way, it's easier to keep her little bottom
clean and dry all the time (an added bonus: no diaper rash!). I still use
regular diapers with covers when we're going out, have guests, or at
night.
On Friday, I went to a women's Bible study at The Vineyard, a church
near the university. June from the Monday ladies' group had recommended it
to me, and it was totally worth it! There were even a few ladies there
whom I already knew: Cindy, the wife of Phil Alderink who is the
'grown-up' in charge of the GCF, Shari, who sometimes goes to GCF, and
Joyce (I think, I'm bad with names) who works at Children's Village where
I used to tutor before Petra was born. There were also several mothers of
small children and a few expectant mothers, so it'll be good to get to
know some of them better. Neither the GCF nor our church has any other
families with small children. It's also fun to find a group of women with
whom to study the Bible - I'd missed that from Caltech, and last year the
GCF women's study met at the same time as our church's prayer meeting. The
Friday morning study is doing the book of Acts, which is neat - how the
Church grew from a tiny group of terrified people into a worldwide
movement that is still changing lives (mine!) in the 20th century. There
was also the option of doing a study on marriage ("Motivating your man") -
the group splits in half to do the different studies - but I'm not
terribly keen on topical/book studies that don't link very clearly back to
the Bible. I prefer studying what the Bible says to what people say about
the Bible, especially if I'm not too sure about their credentials. I've
also heard negative things about women's Bible studies that look only at
books - there seems to be a tendency to think the Bible is too hard, which
it certainly isn't in all cases. The hardest part about the Bible, in my
opinion, isn't the parts that are hard to understand (such as Revelation),
but some of the parts that are clearest: "But I tell you who hear me, love
your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute
you. Give to everyone who asks you, and if someone borrows anything from
you, do not demand it back." That's not hard to understand, but it's hard
to carry out - which is why we need to hear/read/study it.
Other doings this week: On Wednesday I went to Arabic club again, but
one of the people there didn't take the "Arabic only" rule very seriously
and dragged the rest of us down with her - she would ask a question of me
in English that I had no chance of answering in Arabic and, not wanting to
be rude, I'd answer it in English. As I'm not really good at coming up
with conversation topics in Arabic, I ended up speaking a lot of English.
I'll try not to let that happen again next week, and I'll try to make time
to review last year's vocabulary so that I can talk about more things in
Arabic only. Monday afternoon was another meeting of the women's group, it
was just me and June plus a woman I hadn't met before, Thandi, and her
baby Rori. Thandi is half Zimbabwean, which is cool, and so I'm hoping
with us both being half from southern Africa and both having small babies
(Rori is 4 months old) I can get to be good friends with her. She's also
been married less than a year and a half, like us. In fact, Petra was born
the same month as our first anniversary and Rori was born the same month
as Thandi's first anniversary. So, as long as taking the car in to the
mechanic's next Monday doesn't take too long, hopefully I'll see her next
Monday afternoon. June won a lot of gift certificates for the Santa
Barbara Ice Creamery, so she's sharing with all of us - free ice cream
every Monday! Hooray! And I can convince myself that the calcium is
absolutely essential for rebuilding my bones and making more of Petra, so
the indulgence is completely justified. Plus, they have 30 flavours and I
haven't tried all of them yet.
Ari's spent all of today refining his 8-inch binocular telescope. I'm
looking forward to using the finished product. However, lest this become
as long as last week's entry, I'd better stop here!
We're back from California! We had a terrific trip - Petra is still a
fantastic traveler. Our intention was to leave at 7am on Friday, but in
the morning when the alarm rang, we felt that sleep was good and
discovered a number of things that needed to be done before we left, so we
ended up leaving at 8am. Nonetheless, this was still going to be
reasonable. We didn't take the time to check email for the directions to
the retreat, because I had assumed that it would be in the same place as 2
and 4 years ago. "Never assume - it makes an ass of u and me!" Petra
didn't fuss for more than about 15 minutes each time we set off, and then
slept for 3-4 hours at a stretch. Ari and I worked on Karolan (the book he
is writing) - he dictated and drove while I typed. It was fun to discuss
the story line with him, helping him to remove logical flaws and teasing
him by nagging, "What happens to Brogal?" (a character whom we last saw in
quite a sticky situation). We also read some of the Jacobite Trilogy by D.
K. Broster, which is an excellent historical novel. By the time we got to
LA traffic, it was about 5pm, and Petra woke up. Like most of us, Petra
hates LA traffic. So we stopped and fed her, and went on, and she still
hated LA traffic quite loudly. Eventually we got to our destination (so we
thought), and asked for the Caltech Christian Fellowship campsite. They
hadn't heard of the CCF. So I went through a list of names, none of which
were on the official's list of campers. So we walked around the
campground, to no avail - nobody we recognized was there. So we decided to
find an Internet café in Malibu. We stopped at a hotel, and the very
friendly guy at the desk told us that although there were no Internet
cafés in Malibu, we could use his computer. Thank God for kind people! So,
upon checking my email, I got the real directions to the place, and we
finally arrived around 8pm. Poor Bing, having received a few messages from
us on his cell phone, had gone out looking for us, but didn't find us
because we were already on our way to the right place when he started
looking for us in the wrong place! So, the moral of the story is, when
you're going on a 10-hour drive with a baby, it's better to know exactly
where you're going before you leave. This will reduce stress.
The retreat was totally worth the trouble it took to find it, though.
It was such fun to see old friends again - many of them - and to meet
incoming freshmen. On Saturday we spent the (Techer) morning at the beach
and then had ice cream in Malibu. I was very careful to keep Petra out of
the sun and succeeded in protecting her from sunburn. When she wasn't in
the carseat (which has a sun shade), she was completely concealed in the
sling carrier and/or was wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat I made her. For
myself, I put on SPF 50 and was quite confident that it was enough. It
was, in the portions of my anatomy that I reached, but I wasn't thorough
enough and missed areas right by the straps of my swimsuit. So, I look
like a mixed grill, with a white stripe from the swimsuit next to bright
red sunburn next to normal looking skin. The sunburn doesn't hurt anymore
though, and it only started peeling on Thursday evening, so it could have
been worse. Petra was popular with everyone, of course. People always
offer to hold her.
It was fun to talk to incoming frosh, try to allay their fears and so
forth. A common concern seems to be, "Am I smart enough?" My experience in
this regard is that everyone coming in to Tech is smart enough, but
problems occur when other things (health issues, family issues, "is
science for me" issues, other personal problems) get in the way. The alums
at the retreat got to talk to clumps of current students about whatever
wisdom we wanted to pass down. I basically had 3 points. Ask for help,
early and often. Commit to something outside of science, but not too much,
especially at first, to retain sanity and perspective. And take
"Perspectives on the World Christian Movement", a class offered annually
at Lake Avenue Church that changed how I see the world and God's work
therein. This last point is one that I wish I'd known about earlier in my
Caltech career. I took Perspectives the last 2 terms of my senior year,
and I wished I'd taken it earlier because it would have changed how I saw
my ministry on campus. Nonetheless, Ari and I both having taken
Perspectives, we're looking forward to seeing God move us to more
interesting corners of this particular oblate spheroid, corners where
people have not yet heard the Gospel.
After we got back from the beach and ice cream, Anne - who is AMAZING!
- presented Petra (via us) with the! most! incredible! quilt! ever! made!!
I'd like to point out that each of those exclamation points is
grammatically required just by the sheer awesomeness of the quilt. She
spent all summer on it, and it's stars on a blue background with a
crescent moon in one corner. It has a black and white checked border, also
quilted. How much more appropriate a gift is there for the daughter of an
astronomer and a planetary scientist to be given by an astronomer? I've
never done any quilting myself, but from when I've seen my mom do some, I
know it's really time consuming and nearly impossible to get as well
aligned as Anne did. So, Anne, if you're reading this, rest assured that
I'm still saying WOW! every time I glance at it - thank you, and then
some!
On Sunday morning, we got up and left the retreat early so we could
attend church at Trinity Baptist in Pasadena. In many ways, Trinity is the
church we feel most at home in. We both attended there while at Caltech,
and we were married there. We have many friends there, and in general have
more in common with the people there than with the folks at Coronado
Baptist here in Tucson. There's tension for us in attending Coronado in
that, unless something changes, we won't be allowed to become members.
Anyone seeking membership at Coronado has to agree with the statement of
faith without reservation, and the statement of faith includes the idea
that the Bible clearly states that the Rapture will be pre-tribulational.
Our Bibles, unfortunately, clearly state no such thing. There are passages
that seem pre-trib, and passages that seem post-trib, and some that could
be mid-trib, and many that are just confusing! Being Techers, we're
unwilling to just take the pastor's word for it, particularly when the
Bible seems so (deliberately) unclear on this point. And so, we disagree
with the church and can't become members. At Trinity, on the other hand,
there's more freedom in interpretation of unclear passages that aren't
central to our salvation, while there is solid adherence to all the truths
central to the faith: Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, died, rose
again, and ascended into heaven, having borne the punishment for the evil
of humanity that separated us from God, making it possible for us to be
reconciled to Him and adopted into His family. We have found Trinity to
take the Bible seriously, but not to hold too strongly to extrabiblical or
pseudobiblical concepts, or things the Bible isn't clear about. In short,
we agree with the people there on just about everything. Not everything -
we're all human! - but just about everything. Ah, well, we're in Tucson,
not Pasadena, but it was tremendous to see the people at Trinity again and
to show off Petra. She was, not surprisingly, very popular.
We drove back on Sunday afternoon, and arrived around 11 pm. It wasn't
until the next day that I made a sad discovery: my pet rat, Shadow, had
given up the ghost. She seems to have died peacefully in her sleep, not of
thirst or starvation because there was plenty of food and water left in
her cage, and not of some painfully debilitating disease because she
looked so peaceful I almost had to shake the cage to convince myself of
her sad fate. I suspect she had a heart attack or something. She was 2
years old, which is the lower end of the life expectancy of rats, so it's
not an entirely untimely death. But I did spend the rest of the day
wondering about my capacity to care for other small individuals,
fortunately concluding in the end that I love Petra and didn't love the
rat, which makes a big difference in how I treat her. The rat had kind of
been ignored since Petra's birth - fed, but not played with.
Monday afternoon I met with some other ladies for what apparently in
the past used to be a Bible study but is now mostly just socializing, with
the Bible part occurring on Friday mornings instead (I intend to start
going this coming Friday). All of them have kids of their own, mostly
grown. A couple of them commented that, from the way Petra interacts and
socializes, she seems more like a 3-month-old than a 2-month-old. It was
fun, twice one of them waved at her and she randomly jerked her arm in
direct response. Since she hasn't started reaching deliberately for things
(at least that I've noticed), I was surprised and impressed. She's a real
little social butterfly, this one.
On Tuesday, the cold I'd been fighting for a week finally caught up
with me. I abandoned any notion of going to the mom/baby group at the
birth center, and attempted to spend as much of the day in bed as Petra
would allow. Ari walked to and from work (which he often does) so I had no
responsibilities except to keep Petra clean and fed. And, apparently,
spending an entire day resting does wonders for curing a less serious cold
(a fact that I did not have leisure to discover while at Caltech). By
Wednesday I was feeling heaps better.
I finally succeeded in attending Arabic Speaking Club on Wednesday.
Last week, I'd thought it was on Monday but decided to check, so searched
online and found nothing but an outdated page that said it was on
Thursday. So on Thursday I planned on going until Jeannette told me she
had an email saying it was on Wednesday. In any case, I finally made it
this week, and discovered just how much Arabic I've forgotten over the
summer. It was fun, to tell the truth - I just have some serious reviewing
to do. If I get organized enough, and I hope I do, I'd like to try to
continue studying the textbook from last year. Arabic is a really
beautiful language, both spoken and written. Most of the people in the
club are
taking Arabic classes at the U of A, but some are native speakers of
Arabic. There was a man from Jordan, Muhammad, who was thrilled that I
have a baby named Petra. It's something that had occurred to me, but I
hadn't experienced - people from Jordan feel personally complimented that
we chose to name our baby after their most beautiful city. So, that was
fun. Muhammad sat Petra on his lap and chatted to her in Arabic, and she
grinned back. She'll be multilingual whether she likes it or not! People
in our neighbourhood coo at her in Spanish, which I understand less of
than Arabic, though usually it's clear that they're saying something along
the lines of "How cute! What a beautiful baby! Aww, she smiled at me!"
Thursday night, we had new friends from GCF, Ryan and Janine, over for
dinner. Petra was really pretty well behaved, and I was able to prepare
dinner and clean the apartment almost completely before Ari got home. She
even let us have a decent, long conversation without fussing hardly at
all, and let Ryan and Janine hold her. Last night (Friday), she was also a
little angel, letting us listen to the GCF speaker the whole way through
and then sleeping while we hung out and had coffee until almost midnight.
After being that well behaved, one almost wonders what's coming next. And
then, there was this morning. Have you heard of projectile pooping? Nor
had I, but this morning… So I'd finished feeding her and there were
ominous noises proceeding from her nether regions, so I decided to change
her. We keep the changing pad on the floor, in case she suddenly learns to
roll over. I was just inspecting the damage, when she lifted her legs and
squirted. It was hard to believe the range and thoroughness of the job she
did! I was covered in poop - all down my front, both arms, both legs, and
all over the floor. I just sat and laughed for a good five minutes - what
else could I do? She just lay there, grinning at me, as if she'd just done
the most praiseworthy thing, while I wondered what I ought to do next.
Eventually Ari took over and I stepped into the shower, having been
careful not to touch anything else. It's not unheard of for a baby to be
so messy that the best thing is to put her in the bathtub, but for the
mommy to be that messy? Oh, my. I guess there's now no doubting that I'm a
parent!
Petra hates tummy time slightly less now, because she's becoming more
adept at lifting herself off the ground. She can raise her head to 90
degrees for short intervals, which allows her to look around more. She can
also lift just about her entire body off the ground except her chest. It's
funny to see her on her tummy with just her chest and knees touching the
ground, her little rear end sticking in the air and her arms waving. She
can also rotate herself while on her tummy, so that she ends up facing in
a new direction. However, she hasn't consistently figured out how to raise
her chest by pushing with her arms. It sometimes happens, but is still
completely accidental. Verbally, though, she's making leaps and bounds.
She now regularly says "Ah-ghhoe" and seems to be trying to sing along
when I sing to her. I play a fun game (fun for me, anyway) where I try to
determine what note is closest to the sound she's cooing, and then sing
that scale, coming back to rest on the note. She tends to continue cooing
while I do so, so it's like a mom/baby choral class. And she smiles all
the time. Anyway, I've been working on this week's entry for way too
long, and if I don't post it now there'll be even more fun that I'll have
to write about…
Petra is 2 months old today! The past two weeks or so have been fairly
busy, though part of why this update has taken longer than usual is just
my laziness… Petra's vocabulary, as it were, is increasing. She now makes
"la" sounds intentionally and calmly, and has started to combine vowels
with her few consonants. So she'll gurgle at me: "Agheu. A-laaaa.
Aaakhhh." Yesterday afternoon, I tried playing "peekaboo" with her. She
found it confusing, I think - all of a sudden, her world turned yellow as
I pulled the blanket over her, and then it reappeared. She grinned hugely
at me when I removed the blanket from over her face, though, as if to say,
"Gee, Mom, that was so weird. I don't get it, but it was kinda fun!"
She's growing huge, as well. Two weeks ago, she weighed 12 pounds, 12
ounces naked, and a week ago 13 pounds, 8 ounces with clothes on (I didn't
want to deal with her peeing on the scale again). Today, with clothes she
was 13 pounds, 14 ounces, which probably means her actual weight is like
13 ½ pounds. She's clearly outgrown the bulk of her 0-3 month clothes, so
on Saturday I went through many of the other, larger sized clothes we have
for her to sort out which ones will fit next. I discovered that sizing on
baby clothes is almost completely arbitrary. There's one 0-3 month outfit
that she's still lost in, it's the same size as most of the outfits
labeled 12 months. Some of the 3-6 month clothes only just fit her, some
she's swimming in. There are quite a few 6-9 month outfits that look just
the right size for her, and one 9-12 month outfit that looks like it'll
fit her perfectly. So, clearly, there's no standard that clothing
manufacturers stick to in sizing their garments.
Petra isn't a huge fan of tummy time. When she seems to be in a fairly
good mood, I'll flip her over and watch her. She can get more of herself
off the ground now, and is starting to figure out that her arms are useful
in this endeavour, but soon enough she starts getting frustrated and
remains unhappy even once I've flipped her onto her back again. Usually,
though, she'll forgive me as soon as I pick her up and hold her. When
she's on her tummy, I can see the small bald patch she's worn in her hair
from being on her back most of the time. Her hair is pretty thick at the
bottom of her head, and getting thicker on top, so it's an obvious patch
that she's worn away. Of course, compared to Asian babies, her hair is
still negligible. At the U of A Graduate Christian Fellowship retreat the
first part of Labour Day weekend, one of the new Asian grad students asked
me if I'd shaved her head! I was insulted for a few seconds until I
remembered how astonished I'd been at how much hair my friend Boon Sun's
baby Ye Mi had. I guess it just looks weird to see a baby without much
hair if you're used to seeing babies with long, thick, black hair - just
as it looks weird the other way around. So, there you have it: white
babies are bald!
Speaking of the GCF retreat, Petra is an excellent adventurer! We had a
variety of sleeping options, but thought we'd try sleeping in sleeping
bags in a tent with Petra in her carseat, so that we'd know if camping
with the baby worked in a situation where we could, if it was a complete
disaster, move inside. Quite the opposite of the worst-case scenario I'd
imagined, she slept through the night for only the third time in her life!
I kept waking up, looking at her in the light of the moon, wondering,
"Isn't this child hungry?" and going back to sleep. She went to sleep at
around 11pm and didn't wake up until around 6:30 am. I couldn't believe
it! I was more than ready to feed her by the time she woke up! And, of
course, she was the most popular and sought-after person on the retreat.
People were practically fighting over who got to hold her. A few of the
GCF members are speech therapists and it was fun to see how long they
could hold a one-sided conversation with her, since that's what they do
for a living!
After we got back from the retreat, the Parkers spent the rest of the
weekend with us. They're friends of ours from our Caltech days - they
graduated about 20 years before us, but stayed involved with the Caltech
Christian Fellowship. They have 4 kids aged 5 to 17 and are expecting
another - I'm really excited for them. With all of them hanging out in our
little apartment, things were a smidgen chaotic, but it was fun chaos -
especially since I didn't have to be the mommy for all of them! We had
Sunday lunch together, and then on Sunday evening we went out to a remote
place (except for Mary and their youngest, Teri) to do some observing. We
hadn't used Ari's telescope since Petra was born, so it was fun to have it
set up again. Petra was well behaved as long as I kept her fed, though we
didn't see fit to have her look through the telescope yet! All the kids
enjoyed holding Petra, though Teri needed some help supporting her
properly.
Thursday night, we had Ethan and Elizabeth, friends from church, over
for dinner. We'd been think 8 November 2004
28 October 2004
14 October 2004
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25 September 2004
14 September 2004