Comma Dot Comma

Abigail is interested in letters. On her bedroom door, her name is spelled out in colorful paper letters that came home with her from the NICU at the hospital, and whenever she points to it, I take her over there and let her touch them. I say “That’s your name– Abigail!” Then I carefully spell it out, pointing to each letter. We’ve been doing this several times a week for at least couple months. A few days ago as we were lounging companionably together on the floor of her room, she pointed at the door and said, “A-B-eh-G-eh-eh-eh.” In response to my astonishment and delight, she did it again. Then she did it the next day for her dad. At first I thought she had simply memorized the sounds I say when I spell her name, but she has definitely made the connection to letters. Karen gave her some blocks with letters on them for her birthday, and yesterday Abi started pulling them out of the bin, saying, “B! G!” She didn’t actually find the B and the G, but she had clearly associated those shapes and the shapes on her door. The past several times I’ve read her books, she’s pointed, instead of at pictures she really likes, at the words on the pages and the numbers on the barcodes on the back. That’s one of the things I didn’t anticipate about being a mother– reading aloud strings of numbers off the backs of books. If Abi turns out to be a major geek (in the good, smart, experty sense of the term) I will someday tell her this story of How She Got Her Start. “You were definitely a fan of a good serial number as a baby!”

Abigail has her first chore, and she does it with aplomb. In response to her dismay at my not paying enough attention to her, I decided to include her more directly in my activities. So, for the past four or five days, she has had the job of putting the dirty spoons into the dishwasher rack. I put a handful spoons down on the open door of the dishwasher, show her how to do one, and ask her to do the rest. Sometimes she only has the attention span to do one or two spoons, but generally she carefully puts them in one or two at a time, facing the right direction (we do our spoons down), and distributed into different compartments of the silverware rack. Then she claps for herself. I clap for her too. It is genuinely helpful and she does a good job. Then, unfortunately, she thinks we are all done and closes the dishwasher with nothing else on the bottom rack yet. Baby steps, baby steps. I have another chore for her that she is not so interested in, which is putting small items into the washer (socks, washcloths, and the like). I guess I better start giving her an allowance– maybe a penny per spoon?

Abigail is a really good hider. She is not a good hider in the sense of actually getting herself out of sight. She will stick her face in racks of clothes at the department store, under blankets, or behind any object big enough to obscure most of it, without thinking much about the rest of herself. It is so endearing, her standing perfectly still and totally exposed with just her face stuck in the closet curtain, waiting for me to find her. Or grinning and peering at me through a blue tupperware lid as if she is completely invisible while I pretend not to notice that the lid is see-through.

But she is a good hider in her stamina. She will hide for a really, really long time, against all cajoling. We’re talking a full minute of holding as still as possible with her face covered. Sometimes she will peek, and if she gets caught, she goes into a quick retreat. If I tickle her while she is hiding, she will melt into giggles but still not emerge. If I slowly peel back one corner so I can see an eye, she will turn her head away and continue hiding. I run out of hide-and-seeky things to say, she stays hidden so long. When I finally “discover” her and smother her cheeks with “I found you” kisses, she basks in the affection and then quickly covers back up for another round. Abi hides like she means it.

Abigail is testing out ways to make her will a)known and b) fulfilled. For the past few days, she’s been working hard to get me to pay attention to her every second. While she can play contentedly by herself in 10 and 15 minute chunks, she would always prefer to play with me. Or, at the very least, have me sit there and praise her while she is playing. She has recently figured out that interrupting whatever I’m doing can be effective, especially when combined with crying. The pattern is to come over to where I am, cling onto my legs, cry a bunch, then try to obstruct my activities. If I am folding laundry, she will lay on top of the pile where I am stacking the folded clothes. If I am cleaning the kitchen, she will push the dishwasher tray back into the dishwasher and close the door. She will reach up and bang on the computer keys if I’m at the computer, and take away my pen if I’m writing something. If I am able to successfully persevere for a minute or two through these obstructions, she will give up and go back to happily playing by herself for a few more minutes.

This morning I got to witness some inner conflict play out in a little drama. While Abigail does want her own way, she is also very eager to please. A simple warning is usually enough to get her to stop her dangerous activity, relinquish whatever objects she has, and come over for a hug. Today, though, she picked up a wet diaper (recently removed from her bottom) and went walking around with it, pressing it to her face and hugging it (folded up, but still). Her dad asked her to throw it in the trash. She clutched the diaper tighter to her chest, shook her head no, and turned around to head in the opposite direction. He asked her a few more times, and she couldn’t resist coming over to him with the diaper. I held out the trash can. Her dad asked her again to throw the diaper away. Several times, Abigail held the diaper over the trashcan, then shook her head and clutched it safely to her chest. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it, though she wanted so badly to make her dad happy. I finally had to take it from her and throw it away myself, which brought her to tears temporarily until she found something else to play with. It’s hard to be one– the decisions get so much more complicated!

It would be cool if this post were about water balloons filled with cold milk, lobbed at adversaries in the hot sun (mental image courtesy of dr. g). But no. We have a formula switch coming up in the a.m., and I’m not looking forward to it. Abigail’s G.I. doctor is far more concerned than her pediatrician about her slowing weight gain, and wants me to a)feed her higher-calorie foods and b)switch her to a higher-calorie elemental formula. I’ve tried three bottles of the new formula over the last two days and she has drunk a total of 2 ounces. I myself am not super-worried about her weight gain, though I don’t like feeling her tiny ribs and shoulder blades so sharply through her skin. She is a glacially slow, cautious eater, and a very active baby (her whole life is a pilates + step aerobics routine) and her digestion is not that efficient yet. If she would let me help her eat more often, she’d do better. My general feeling is that she will grow out of her skinniness when she becomes more proficient at feeding herself and her digestive system matures, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I’m on board with increasing the calories in theory, but not too excited about helping her adjust to a new, equally yucky, formula. There are two options with the new one: unflavored, which tastes like some kind of cleaner mixed with sweet-n-low and the powdered cheese packet from a mac-n-cheese box; or vanilla flavored, which tastes like cake batter plus an extra cupful of sweet-n-low and, of course, the cleaner. We’re going with unflavored. It’s closer to her former formula; Abi doesn’t like super-sweet things anyway; and it will be an easier transition to regular milk when that day finally arrives. So if you are a prayer and are reading this on Thursday or Friday, send up a shout-out for sweet, hungry Abi, who is probably on a mini-hunger strike.

Her G.I., who is a nice guy and a copious note-taker but not Mr. Details, gave me a “helpful” photocopy of high-calorie foods that I could consider giving Abigail. Milk, ice cream, butter, cream cheese, regular cheese, breakfast drink mixes, yogurt… Um. yeah. Remember that whole bleeding from exposure to milk thing, doc? He had me take the photocopy anyway since it had two items on it that she could eat: peanut butter, and wheat germ. I plan to stick with my stand-by of coconut oil, which is one of the few non-animal sources of the saturated fats that babies need to grow their awesome brains. And it makes everything taste really good. Coconuts are such strange, furry creatures and they produce such delicousness. Where would Thai cuisine be without the mighty coconut?

We may have an un-breakthrough here. I’ve been mildly euphoric this week because Abi has finally figured out a way to put herself to sleep: sucking on a clean, empty bottle. I can lay her in bed awake with the bottle and a blanket after our little book and song routine and she will just lie there quietly for a few minutes until she falls asleep. There have only been two Failed Naps in the past week, after having one a day for, oh, her WHOLE LIFE. It has felt like a miracle. It has felt marvelous, not having those three or four battles to fight each day, helping her get to sleep. She’s been sleeping 12 hours at night and 2-3 during the day, the most sleep she’s gotten since she was a newborn. But something is amiss. Abi’s mornings have become emotional tornadoes. It used to be that she could play happily by herself for quite awhile in the morning while I got ready and did a few chores. No more. After half an hour of wakefulness she loses her happy disposition and things that used to mildly bother her become intolerable. Before nine am today, she had meltdowns over: getting dressed; getting her face wiped after breakfast; getting her nose sucked; her dad leaving for church; my refusal to give her my toothbrush; and something I didn’t understand related to her baby dolls. By 9:30 am, the peaceful intervals between sob fests had shrunk to minutes and then seconds. I decided I couldn’t take her to church in that condition, both for her sake and the nursery staff’s. Now she is in the middle of what sounds like, alas, a Failed Nap. 10 am is pretty early to put her down after a 7 am wakeup. Better go fetch her… I’m not totally sure the morning madness is related to her new sleeping habits. It could be related to getting her vaccinations on Thursday, or it could be related to her not wanting her formula as much anymore, but not replacing those calories with actual food. Maybe I have a perpetually hungry girl on my hands. Off to rescue the baby from her bed….

Abigail had her one-year check-up today. 20 lbs 8 oz, 31 inches, on the skinny side and quite tall, at or ahead of schedule on the milestones. The good doctor got to hear her tea-kettle scream several times because we were in an exam room painted with enormous Shrek characters that tickled her fancy. Anytime she caught sight of the donkey, she got so happy she just had to shriek. He also got to hear her high-pitched baby talk; the three blind mice were painted at eye level, and whenever I put her on the floor to walk around, she would go over to the wall, pat them, and ask them unintelligible questions. She cracks me up.

Abi is loving the books again. After that intense week a month ago, her passion died back down to manageable levels. But yesterday morning when she woke up, the first thing she did when she saw me was make the sign for book, which, for her, is clapping. I distinguish it from clapping because she says “Booh, Booh,” along with it, and also because there is nothing to clap about. I told her we had to change her diaper and get her a bottle; as I was shaking the bottle, she insistently did the sign for book again and again. Okay, Abi, okay! Books it is… we relaxed in the comfy recliner with a big stack for about 20 minutes. Not a bad way to start the day. I like reading the fun, interesting books to her, but when she asks for the boring ones over and over it gets a little tiresome. I think I will go through the house and hide the dumb ones. Most of her play lately has been feeding and care for her dolls and animals, but the imaginary sharing reached a whole new level at naptime when she carefully pressed her bottle to the face of her favorite character in her new (and beloved) Pajama Time book. It is a cartoon cat asleep in a big bed with a bunch of other animals. I can’t fathom why that one round face calls to her above all others, but it does, and it apparently deserves to be fed. All the cute inanimate objects in the house have no idea how well cared for they are! A few days ago Abi was having a snack and feeding it to her baby doll when she suddenly remembered a giant stuffed bear enclosed in the ottoman. She abandoned her food, opened the ottoman, pulled out the bear, and brought him over to offer him some, too. Far be it from Abi to neglect even the least of these!

She’s got smarts. I guess I feel that all babies are smart– it never ceases to amaze me how much they learn and master in such a short time, all while undergoing cataclysmic growth. But Abi is the only baby I have known intimately and watched closely, other than my youngest brother (who is now 24). Plus, like all the parents of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, I think my child is above average. I love how, soon after she discovered that her voice makes a neat echo in a cardboard tube, she started trying to get that echo in any container she picked up: a cup, a shoe, a box, a bowl. And I enjoy watching her play pretend, propping up her baby doll and carefully spooning food into its mouth from an empty bowl. Today she did that with her Auntie Marie for about ten minutes, occasionally serving herself an imaginary mouthful, or turning to give all the miniature farm animals a taste. I like how much she understands my speech, and how she gets a little perplexed when I say something that she thinks she should be able to understand, but can’t. Any sentence that I begin, “Do you want ____?” she feels she should be able to comprehend. I have to stop saying things to her like, “Do you want to be a Charlie’s Angel when you grow up?” because her brow furrows and she gets restless and needs a hug. One day she didn’t quite understand her dad’s instructions to give me a zerbert, and it caused her to cry. She wanted to understand so badly! I like how she flops down and lifts up her shirt when she wants somebody to “get” her with tickles. I like how she experiments with new words, occasionally coming out with a surprise like “balloon” or “ruff ruff,” which she might not say again for a few weeks. I like her smarts.

I hereby interrupt my catalog of things to love about Abigail with a brief update on our recent doings. We were gone in California and Nevada for five days– two days camping, two days visiting my brother, and one day celebrating our thirteenth wedding anniversary. We are really becoming old fogeys! But that didn’t stop some generous couple at the fancy organic restaurant where we were feasting on duck, salmon, artisan cheeses, and cold melon soup from contributing $50 to our meal because we seemed like a sweet couple.

My mom, aka Grammy, went to great lengths to make the camp out a good experience for Abigail. She enlisted other family members in paving two entire campsites with tarps so that the baby wouldn’t get too dirty. She brought a whole suitcase of warm clothes and extra books. My brothers built a baby boxing ring and put an area rug inside it as a semi-enclosed play area for Abi and her toys (also provided by Grammy). She was often joined in there by her cousin Judah, who is four and therefore technically too old for baby toys, but he has such a rich imagination that any plaything quickly becomes a vessel in whatever dramatic fight between good and evil is going on in his head. Apart from three hours of being awake and afraid of the roof of the tent the first night, and miserably cold the second morning, Abi had a wonderful time. She explored dirt and rocks and rivers and lakes and trees, and gasped with delight at every chipmunk that raced through (one of her favorite kinds of animal). She showed off for her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and ate well. She slept through every long car ride and cuddled all the women of the family, though she was more dubious about the men. Gavin won her heart a bit by dunking himself in the lake; she offered him handful after handful of rocks as a reward.

Her time visiting her cousins was a little more troubling for her. Abi rarely sees me around other kids, and she was shocked and appalled to see me occasionally hold and cuddle my adorable nephews. The first time her jealousy emerged, she was playing happily on the floor. I picked up two-month old Micah, who was getting a little fussy in his bouncy seat, and sat with him on the floor. As soon as Abi noticed this, she walked over to me, screeching and crying. She clutched my knees, banging them with her hands and wailing and complaining, trying to climb up into my lap too. Neither Grammy nor Gary nor any other person in the room could persuade her to come to them and play. Finally I had to walk out of the room. When I returned a bit later without the baby, she needed lots of cuddles. She had a similar reaction when Judah came through in his Batman costume, wrapped his arms around my neck, and dangled there for a few seconds before we had a little wrestle/tickle session. Abigail’s reaction after crying was to attack Judah by climbing on him and head-butting him, the way she does when she’s playing “I’m gonna get you” with me or her dad. She had a weird sort of smiley grimace on her face as she did so, as if she both wanted to get in on the fun and get back at him. There weren’t any issues with Noah, who is seven and therefore more likely to show affection by challenging me to a rousing game of gin rummy than by coming to look for hugs. I sure do like my three boys over there in the mountains of California. I would hug them every day if I could, baby jealousy or no.