Comma Dot Comma

Life with Abigail, while wonderful, is not all hugs and cuddles. There some parts about raising her that cause me to be flummoxed or exasperated. None of these is a big deal; they just tire me out at times. In no particular order:

It typically takes her at least an hour to fall asleep at night. We take turns going in once an hour or so to cuddle her and remind her to sleep. She doesn’t cry, but she does stay awake talking to herself and rolling around. Usually she falls asleep with her head jammed into the corner and her feet stuck up in the bars of the crib, resting on the bumper. I’ve decided that she’s an introvert who needs the time to decompress, but that is a LONG time for a little girl to be alone in the dark. But she does go down easily for a nap now! Failed naps are down to less than one a week. Woohoo!

Her untameable rat’s nest bed head (see her sleeping habits, above). It is precious when she is rosy and sleepy and just waking up. No so much when out running errands in the middle of the day.

She is so particular about food. She goes in waves of extreme pickiness. Recently we had a few days in a row where she preferred filling up on water to eating anything I had to offer. I was changing drenched diaper after drenched diaper and laying out as many food choices I could think of, to no avail. The phase passed as quickly as it came. Maybe her stomach was bothering her? Her diet is skewing pretty sugary. She won’t touch a vegetable or most fresh fruit anymore– she only likes processed fruit (applesauce, fruit leather, juice). She gets honey or brown sugar in her morning cereal and one treat during the day, usually a cookie. She won’t eat peanut butter anymore unless I put honey in it, or many other things unless she can dip them in ketchup or barbecue sauce.

I’m tired of looking for the stray cat (see previous post).

She has very rigid rules about whom she is willing to interact with. People in the church nursery are okay. One person invited into the house is okay. One other child in the library play area is okay. Groups of people, or anyone located anywhere other than in the house or nursery, are not okay. She climbs up my chest and tries to hide as much of her body as possible behind my neck or hair. “I’m shy!” she mumbles into my neck. Yes, Abigail, we know.

Abigail is in the midst of one of those developmental explosions where she suddenly seems capable of so much more than she was even a week and a half ago. I know she’s been practicing all along, but it still feels surprising. None of these things are particularly remarkable but I wanted to record them for posterity. She can now consistently:

During the past few weeks Abigail’s absolute favorite place to play has been the bricks. I don’t get the appeal. We have a brick wall with a fireplace in it in our living room, and there is a 2 foot by 2 foot by 12 foot brick ledge along it. Whenever my girlie thinks about it or catches sight of it, she says, “Bick? Bicks? Up!” I let her play there as often as I can, but the level of supervision required is a little tiresome. She runs back and forth along them, pointing out individual bricks to her teddy bear; she bangs on the wall and asks the teddy bear to do the same; she leans into the dubiously clean fireplace to point out our newish pressed tin vases to him, asking him to admire: “Wase? wase? hmm?” Some of her best laughing lately has been in response to virtuoso teddy bear reactions. You should see that teddy bear go wild over all the beautiful bricks, or take a running start and bonk into the wall, or go over the moon in his howling admiration of the vases. Really you should see Abigail belly laughing and out of breath afterward. Occasionally she dives off the bricks into my arms, shouting “Two! Sree!” I think we have yet to encounter a time when she gets tired of the bricks before I do. Inevitably I cut things short too soon for Abigail and we have tears and writhing.

The only surefire way to distract her is to remind her of the Little People play house we got her for $2 a couple weeks ago. It is her second-favorite place to play. She loves to open the front door, stick a little person through it, and say, “Lo!” She also loves to put a person on the toilet upstairs and solemnly announce, “Poop.” Other activities that her little people partake of are “Phone! Ring!”; “Eat S[n]ack” from the refrigerator; and “Fun! Fun! Fun!” which is having two or three at once jump up and down. If I want to get her giggling, I put a Swedish Chef finger puppet through a window and have him shout “Boo!” Boo, as a word, is rich with possibilities for humor. It’s all in the delivery.

“Daah-ee!” said Abigail, coming triumphantly off the slide at the park and running over to her daddy. She talks all the time now, but tends to skip some key consonants, especially those in the middle of two syllable words such as “daddy.” She was so cute and beamy with her two little ponytails bouncing on top of her head that a nearby mother stopped to admire her. The woman’s own 20-month-old son roamed around at her feet as we chatted, and Abigail studied him from behind her dad’s legs. A few minutes later, we parted, the boy off to get a drink and Abi to take another go at the slide. When her feet hit the tarmac again, she noticed a little problem between the boy and his mom.

“Say please!” the mom kept saying. He really wanted that sippy cup, but would not or could not say please. Instead he screamed and threw himself down on the ground. “Say please and I’ll give it to you,” the mom repeated for the fifth time. Abigail took a few steps toward them. “Pease!” she said, loudly and helpfully. This did not help. In fact, they ignored her. So we praised her ourselves for saying please.

She’s a great promoter of harmony, that Abigail. Lately she’s convinced us to add kisses to our family hugs. Her methods are simple: squish mommy’s and daddy’s faces together. Then, after we have kissed, turn each one to her own face for an Abigail smooch. “mmmmmmm,” says Abigail. “Hugs! Cuh-llles! (cuddles)”

My friend Kathy blogged about bliss recently and her post brought to mind one of my latest blisses: Mid-mornings in the backyard with Abigail. It is cool, sunny, sweatshirt weather, with the green grass before us and the desert mountain rising behind us and the blue sky above us, into which we often squint to find the latest “pane” flying over. Abigail waves and says bye-bye to each one as it travels out of sight. As soon as Abigail crosses the line between patio and grass, she takes off, shouting, “Run! Run! Run!” She’s still an ineffective runner– she has that bobbly going-nowhere-fast look of a muppet on the move– but she loves it, and I give chase, capturing her every few yards for a bear hug. Sometimes we fall down and giggle in the grass too. Then she spots the soccer ball and yells, “Kick!” We take turns dribbling and chasing. Anytime she hears a dog or person or a loud engine, she mimics it and then demands, “See?” She hasn’t yet figured out that some things she hears are out of sight. So I heave her up on my shoulders and let her peer over the fence for awhile. Then we run some more or dig in the dirt or inspect the lemon tree for ripe lemons. If we find one we pick it and sniff it, because there is nothing so delicious as the smell of a fresh, ripe lemon. Good times.

At 17 months, Abigail’s imagination is finally starting to rev up. She has been feeding and caring for her dolls and animals since she was 11 months old, but now she likes to imagine all kinds of things. She will spend awhile calling invisible cats in the bedroom, fingers outstretched and beckoning. Or crawl around on the floor barking. Or use a paper plate as a steering wheel in an imaginary car. Or make two stuffed animals have a high-pitched conversation: “Hi! Oh no! Bye! (kiss kiss).” This morning, though, her play was especially poignant and made me long once again for relatives who live closer.

Abigail has a photo album of her family members and she likes to go through it with me and have me name everyone. She lingered with a wistful smile on the page with her uncles, whom she hasn’t seen for three months. She did a web chat with Gavin over Christmas, but he had a big beard and I don’t think she really understood who it was. I reminded her about how she sometimes talks to them on the computer, and she got an idea.

By gestures, she indicated that I was to hold up the photos at eye level while she interacted with them. I took on the voices of the uncles and responded appropriately to each new turn of the “conversation.” She never looked at me for the whole 15 minutes or so, responding instead to their pictures. It was an imaginary web chat. She danced and sang along with her alphabet song twice in a row; lifted up toy after toy for them to see; demonstrated her puzzle and truck-driving skills; and did whatever they asked her to do, including offering them a bite of her snack. Finally “Gavin” said it was time to say bye-bye, because mommy needed to take a shower. She stopped in her tracks and her little shoulders sagged and her eyes silently pleaded. Her uncles were firm, though. “I love you!” said “gavin” and his brother. The book shut. Abi was so sad.