Comma Dot Comma

I love Abi’s deep interest in small spaces and large objects. Anytime a new box or container makes its way into the house, guess who wants to immediately climb inside? One of her favorite tiny spaces lately is the storage ottoman. It is a square microfiber footrest with a hinged lid. We used to keep games in there, but now it contains a fairly large teddy bear. Abigail will ask to be lifted inside (“hu-up?”) and then spend a good twenty minutes pulling the bear out, putting it on the ground, and immediately picking it back up and stuffing it back inside with her.

I guess that normal progress in walking for most babies is to go fairly quickly from a few steps to a lot, but not really be able to carry things around or maneuver for awhile. Abigail, with her love of giant objects, has decided to do it backwards. She still only feels confident to go a few steps at a time, but she will happily attempt it while lifting and carrying her baby piano, my purse, or a soccer ball. Or perhaps a cereal box or a pan lid, if those are handy. She can actually do pretty well slinging her baby doll over her shoulder and setting out across a few feet of space. During a visit to the creek that ran through our campground last weekend, she tried to pick up progressively larger rocks out of the water. Her record find was a flat, pancake-sized one, and she made an impression on her audience of relatives when she maneuvered it briefly out of the water. She was a little angry to discover, during that same weekend, that the heavy, bakery-sized box with a handle that she has been dragging around the entryway like a suitcase for a few weeks was actually a gift for her seven-year-old cousin, and no longer hers to manhandle. I’m thinking of calling her She-Ra.

Abi likes a little thrill. Not the thoughtless rambunctious kind, but the the mostly safe kind. She likes to stand on our bed and tip backwards like a tree into a pile of pillows– Timmmmmbbbbeeerrrr! She likes to go down a slide as long as she is on my lap, and to try to dunk her whole head under the water as long as she is the one squatting down, controlling her descent. So far she’s made it in up to her nose. Camping this weekend, she had a great time daring herself to go deeper and deeper into the cold, muddy lake. She finds it delicious to have her daddy toss her into the air, just a little bit, and to fall headlong into his arms when she takes a risk and walks farther than she thinks she can. The other day I watched her size up the distance between her and the enticingly opened dresser drawer, trying to decide if she could make it. “You can make it!” I said. She shook her head with conviction. “yes, you can!” I repeated. She gave me a little sideways grin, shook her head again, and triangulated the distance. She went first to a chair she knew she could reach and then over to the dresser. Triumph! When she is in the middle of one of these little thrills she looks a little stunned, then the fear is overcome by a tiny smile that grows and grows and grows. Then, of course, she wants to do it again.

Abigail has a delightful sense of humor that keeps expanding. For the past few days, she has been entertaining herself by putting herself, and her dolls and animals, in positions where they don’t necessarily belong. She has a little chair in her play area, and I looked over when I heard her guffaw. She thought it was pretty funny that she was STANDING on the chair instead of SITTING in it (It is only an inch or two off the ground). She also laughs when she puts a doll or animal in the chair in a sitting position, or when she manages to stuff one of them into the tiny compartment on her activity table where snacks usually go. HA HA HA, she says. This laugh is not the delighted giggles that she gets when wrestling with her dad; it is more intellectual, almost fake but not quite. It is for things that are conceptually funny rather than physically funny. She also uses it when Dr. G and I are laughing about something, and though she doesn’t know why, she likes the fact that we are laughing and wants to join in.

Some things that are physically funny are honking mama’s nose; dunking a hand in a cup of water and then getting mama’s face all wet; and, of course, splashing mama in the pool. It is also funny to come suddenly around a corner, or out from under a cloth, and surprise us. It is funny to see herself make a face or a weird movement in the mirror, and then kiss the image. It is funny to lay on mama’s neck and feel the vibrations when mama talks. Abi’s world is fully of funny things, and there seem to be more and more reasons to laugh.

In honor of Abigail’s upcoming birthday, I thought I’d do a few posts singing her praises. Before Abigail was born, Dr. G predicted that I would want to return to work full time fairly soon after her arrival. I like interesting conversation on complex subjects; having challenging goals and projects; feeling that I am contributing to the community at large; and receiving compensation and recognition for my work. I also hate busywork. Caring for a baby brings none of those benefits but plenty of busywork, so he wasn’t wildly off the mark in his prediction. The reality, though, is that my time with Abigail brings me deep satisfaction, mainly because I like her so darn much.

I particularly love her affectionate nature. If I am carrying her and we walk by a mirror, she immediately hugs my neck, presses her cheek against mine, and beams at our image. She will hold the pose for as long as she has a glimpse of us together. If her dad and I are in a room together with her, she will engineer a group hug by leaning toward whichever one of us is not holding her. Once we are all close enough, she will wrap one arm around each of us and lean her head first on me, then on daddy. She tilts her head back so she can smile up at our faces, and is especially happy if we kiss. She’s been doing these group hugs since she was about five months old.

Abigail likes to play while leaning against me, every so often burrowing her head into my lap. Her favorite thing about learning to walk is probably the huge bear hug she gets when she reaches me. She also loves to clutch her stuffed animals to her chest, bury her face in them, and rock them back and forth. I have even seen her cuddle a particularly satisfying just-finished bottle that way. She smiles sweetly at me at night when she is falling asleep in my arms, and she flails wildly with excitement when she spots me or her dad from across a crowded room, struggling until she gets a hug opportunity. My life was just fine before I got fifteen or twenty Abigail hugs a day, and it will be fine again when she decides that maybe that is a few too many, but for now I’ll wallow in hugtopia.

Why doesn’t Abigail say “baby” anymore? That perfect early word has degenerated into ba-ba, her same word for ball and book and bye-bye (which also used to be much clearer). I miss it. I guess it’s a fair trade for her learning to shake her head yes and no this week. I can’t tell you how much easier it makes her and my lives now that she can answer simple questions. Of course, her style is still pretty awkward. She looks like a tiny Pearl Jam fan when she nods yes. When she shakes her head no, she looks like she’s being attacked by a swarm of flies. The other problem is that she hasn’t quite learned to apply the “yes” properly. I will ask her if she’s sleepy, she’ll nod yes, and then not be able to fall asleep. Or she nods yes to milk, and then drinks only two ounces. The “no” she understands perfectly well. Her most recent one occurred when her dad suggested that Mama carry her inside after a swim, instead of him. The swarm of invisible flies descended. No way Jose! I did it anyway, and she survived just fine.

Abi also has an invented sign that I can’t quite figure out. She opens and closes her hands simultaneously, like emergency blinkers. It sometimes seems to mean “I like this” and other times to mean “I want that.” She also enjoys signing book, car, hat, milk, and bubbles. Most of those come from a sign language book that she has. I remember the first time she said and signed bubbles, over fourth of July weekend. My mom was here and noticed Abi having fun with her profuse drool. “You sure like those spit bubbles,” mom said. “Bubble. Bubble,” said Abi, and made the sign, which is squeezing your fingers together in the air like you are popping bubbles. Now she looks for bubbles everywhere just so she can say it and do the sign. Her newest verbal words are up (pronounced ha-UP) and fan (pronounced nana), because she likes watching the ceiling fan turn in the dining room while she eats. We find our entertainment where we can round these parts.

I’ve been trying to explain mysterious forces to Abigail. Our back neighbor has tall flowering bushes, and when they catch the wind they go wild. The top of the back fence becomes a frenzy of green and orange and yellow and fuchsia dancing right and left. When I was in the pool with Abigail and a gust of wind came up, she leaned back against me, pointed at the swaying bushes, and said, “Uh?”

“That’s the wind, Abi,” I said. Then I made a blowing noise. “WWWWIIIIISSSHH!” She was satisfied, and quietly watched the show. I wonder if she made the connection to one of her favorite swimming activities. She likes to stand up on the top step of the pool when a hot wind comes through. She shudders and grins as it hits her wet skin. Once yesterday she howled like a bear and then laughed at herself before she ducked back down into the water.

That night as I was rocking her to sleep, she pushed herself up so she could see me and pointed at our shadows moving against the wall, cast there by the night light. She’d been watching them for awhile. “Uh?” Abi asked.

I stopped humming. “You see, Abigail, light is both a wave and a particle, and dense objects such as ourselves can block its path before it hits the opposite wall. What you noticed are the dark areas where we have interrupted the wave pattern.” No, I didn’t say that. I said, “Those are our shadows.” She was happy and snuggled back down. It is almost as if she doesn’t care what the answer is, so long as she knows that I have one.

The more teeth Abigail gets, the less willing she is to eat baby food, or even chopped up food. She wants it whole, and she wants to bite it all herself: apples, peaches, strawberries, bread, graham crackers, green beans, lunch meat. If I take food from my plate and cut it up for her, she keeps pointing at mine because she wants the Big Pieces. If I try to put a bite of food in her mouth, she rears back in disgust and then takes it away from me, either to eat it or throw it down. There are only a few exceptions– is if she is hungry and wants to eat faster, she’ll tolerate a certain number of spoonfuls, or if we are sharing something and trading bites. Then she will let me feed her so long as she gets to feed me first. She likes to put a pea or a blueberry in my mouth and then take it back to eat it herself. Yes, I let her do it. We shared bodily fluids for so many months–heck, I fed her my bodily fluids!– that a little spit seems like nothing. (Sorry if that last line grossed out you non-breastfeeders.) I can only imagine how delighted she will feel to finally get some molars. She’s going to be asking me if she can eat sand just to test her mashing and grinding powers.

Abi’s spent a couple days sucking an empty bottle, carrying it from room to room with her and refusing substitutions like sippy cups or pacifiers. At first I wasn’t sure if it was some psychological soothing thing in the face of her growing independence, or if she was teething again. It was teething. Yesterday I spotted a new tooth on the top left; today I found another on the bottom right. So she’s got six teeth that don’t line up, and a cute lopsided grin. I wonder what she eats in her dreams?

Abigail wishes she could dress and undress herself. She has the right idea; whenever she finds an item of her clothing within reach, she shakes it open, puts it on top of her head, and pulls down. Diapers she carefully opens and crams between her legs. If she recognizes a pair of pants, she will lift one leg and then the other, stepping on top of them. Her method for undressing is to grab two fistfuls of her shirt and then raise her arms above her head. Her attempts, while valiant, only bring failure. I sometimes have to free her head from horrible t-shirt entanglements. She seems to enjoy the process anyway. She entertained herself for a few minutes this morning trying to fit one of my flip-flops onto her tiny foot. It’s a pair that she really likes because they have rivets along the… whatchamacallit? The toe part. She’s into tiny buttons.

Abi thought the World Cup final match was pretty funny. I’m not sure what, exactly, caught her fancy, but every so often she would stop playing at our feet, look up at the TV, and giggle. We were rooting for Spain because we happen to have a Spanish flag in our house (thanks, Gav!) but she was rooting for Netherlands because she liked the goalie’s checkered jersey. She herself has just learned how to kick a ball; we spend a little time each day with me holding her hands while she repeatedly kicks and chases one of those big rubber balls you can find at the supermarket. Best one dollar I’ve spent in awhile. Whenever she gets a good solid kick on the ball, she says, “Dat,” her term for any moment of satisfaction, such as putting a lid on a box, falling dramatically onto a pillow, or turning the pages of a book. She has a few other invented words as well. Her universal question is “uh?” which she employs when she wants to know the name of something or wants to know what is going on. I don’t hear that one as much as the emphatic “Eh!” which means “I want” and is usually combined with a pointing finger. She wants a lot, my sweet Abi does. She has started some beta testing of temper tantrums when the “eh” doesn’t get the desired results. She ramps up the high-pitched scream, falls on the floor, arches her back, and cries real tears. Pretty good for a first timer. I’ve only seen a few tantrums so far; they happen when she is tired or hungry, so here’s hoping that they stay rare events and easy enough to avoid with basic parenting.

Which reminds me that she is making very good progress on her biting. We had some setbacks when the top teeth came in and she was excited to test them out on everything she could, but since then she has returned to showing her affection with sloppy kisses and zerberts. The only times she really fails are when she is very tired or very excited. I’ve got a few bruised, teeth-marked spots on my shoulders and face. I’ve learned to just keep her mouth away from me during those times. It’s interesting to see the fundamentals of human nature so clearly on display– many of us are least able to control our most destructive desires when we are experiencing intense emotion or physical distress. The fact that Abi has trouble not biting during those moments actually makes me feel really proud of her; for most of those dozen other kisses I get throughout the day, she is probably making some kind of deliberate baby choice not to bite. Good girl, Abigail Ruth! Self-control is the key to avoiding a life of crime!

This morning Abigail decided that she wanted to eat her snack while standing on her head. She had a little tray of puffs on the floor, so naturally she stood up, balanced her head against the floor with her bottom in the air, and carefully tipped the dish into her mouth with her free hands. When she got tired of that she retreated into her box and tried feeding the puffs to one of her stuffed animals, a bright orange cat that is so round that she alternates between calling it Cat and calling it Ball. But I had fun watching her press pieces of cereal against its sewn-on mouth before placing them into her own. Sometimes to get her to eat a little more, I pour portions of her snack into different sizes and shapes of containers, such as a dump truck, a shoe box, and a plastic egg. She can sometimes successfully pour them from one to the other, though as always, her favorite method of getting them out is to shake the receptacle wildly until everything goes flying. The truck, she has discovered, doesn’t necessarily need to be shaken to get a spectacular spill. All it really needs is a good crash into a solid object. Kewwwwl.

She was whiny this morning while I was getting the dishes done, so I tried to placate her with a bowl full of suds to play with. She sat at my feet saying, “Bub- bub- bub- bub-bubbles” and amassing mountains of suds on her hands. Then she realized that she didn’t know how to get the bubbles off, and panicked. She tried shaking, but it didn’t really work. She tried crawling away really fast, and that didn’t work either. These were some tenacious bubbles! She resorted to crying and I swooped in with a towel and showed her how to wipe them off. Sweet relief! I guess she doesn’t like having weird things stuck to her hands. I tried to do a science experiment with her yesterday that threw her into a horrible mood that lasted the whole of the afternoon. We sat on the floor with a mixing bowl of dry flour. She put her hands in once or twice, but didn’t enjoy it. Then she bumped the bowl so some of the flour sprinkled onto her foot– oh, the horror! I brought down a few different containers of water, thinking she might enjoy feeling the flour as it changed consistency with the addition of liquid. She enjoyed drinking the water and pouring it on herself and the floor, and, surprisingly successfully, into another container, but she did not enjoy pouring it into the flour. The stickier the flour and my hands got, the more she fussed. I made a smooth, elastic dough ball and she refused to hold it. She just clung to the side of me that was farthest from the bowl and whined until I had cleaned up the mess. It is hard to clean a 3 x 3 foot area of water, flour and dough, especially with a small child clinging to one, so it took some time and I got quite an earful all the while. Sorry, baby girl! We’ll have more fun next time.