Eugenious

Dear Elena,

Ah, sure, apologies and all that for not writing you a birthday letter since May. Second children, blah, blah. I really do think there are more picture of you, second child, so don’t worry. I love you the purplest.

A short summary of your last few months:

• June 24 (in Arlington, OR, at the playground): You stood by yourself, from crouching while hanging on to standing: “Look, Ma!”

Elena's first solo stand

• Also that week we were camping: You started waving. Clapping too, I think. You also signed “more” once and “milk” twice. That’s it for the sign language. I mean, reaching and making whiny noises works so well.
• You love waterfalls. The one we hiked to in the Wallowas made you smile.

Elena at the waterfall

• You like tents. You enjoy burrowing into puffy sleeping bags and bouncing off the tent walls.

• Late June: You realized that banging two objects together is pretty fun. And noisy.

Smiling on cue

• July 12: You got your first tooth.
• July 19: Second tooth. Now we’re feeding you filet mignon. Rare.
• Late July: You started taking directions. You’ll “shake the water off” if Daddy asks you to, shaking your head “no.” And you notice when someone is leaving and saying good-bye; you wave to them, even with only the prompt of good-bye language.

• July 27: You started walking, first taking a tentative three steps, as Gramma Mia and I looked on, not believing that Grampa had really only stepped out of the room for a moment. Within a couple of days, you were up to eleven steps, including stopping, crouching down, and picking up objects. Now you’re a toddler, definitely preferring walking to crawling. I’m not sure you realize yet that you’re allowed to bend your legs when you walk, so you really do toddle. I can’t even remember the last time you crawled (but it was probably yesterday. Please forgive me; I have two small children.).
• You dig ice cream. It’s required in this family.

• Within the past month, you’ve started to understand concepts that seem rather abstract to me. You’ll pick up my shoes, even Mary Janes with heels, shoes that don’t look anything like your shoes in color, type, or size, and you’ll try to put them on your feet. It’s the same with hats. You don’t have any baseball hats, but you’ll pick up my Yankees hat and place it on your head. And you’ll pick up anything with plentiful buttons on one side: old cell phones or remote controls, a calculator, (a cob of corn tonight; those are buttons, right?) and you’ll talk to your favorite person on it (Tephra?). Remember, too, that you live in a family where Daddy uses his cell phone for work, I don’t have a cell phone, and I spend perhaps an hour, total, on the land line each week.

Hip hip. That's what tigers say.

• Yesterday, at the end of a hike with Sylvan on the Amazon Headwaters trail, we crossed a bridge with safety wires placed closely enough that I felt I could let you do your own thing. You crouched down, picked up some Oregon ash seeds, and tossed them over the edge. As you’ve done from nearly Day 1, you started exploring on your own, testing gravity in this case – or at least having fun throwing stuff.
• You have three words that I recognize: dog (daw), cat (a-dat), and door (doh).
• You think the trampoline is great fun, but “how am I supposed to get off this thing?”
• And I almost forgot: you’re using the potty! Okay, you’re using your diaper, too, but I just sat you on the potty last week, and you figured, “Oh, I know what this is for.” And, without fail thus far, you’ve delivered. Today, at your one-year exam (30th percentile for height, 75th for weight – taking after Mommy), the doc essentially said, “Really? It seems too early.” I know, I know. And we have to get through the year of stubbornness and running away, but I’ll take using the potty instead of yucky diapers while I can.

From this to this in a year:

I love you, Elena, you and your sweet smile.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Elena,

You’re wonderful and sweet and smiley, and, regrettably, I think I’m going to have to limit this to a list and some photos.

Elena works on her Elvis impersonation. Too much tongue?

Ooh, sprinkler

• You started crawling 10 days before you turned 9 months old.

• You started moving from crawling to sitting a few days after that. Before that point, you’d often hang out in a reclining Botticelli position, working your oblique abdominal muscles, trying to push yourself to sitting. Now you sit up effortlessly. You still like that lounging position, though.

• You’re sometimes shy around strangers, asking to return to Daddy or me if you’re a little unsure of who we’re handing you off to. You warm up quickly, though, and you still flirt with everyone we meet at the grocery store.

• I read that baby fat reaches its peak around 9 months. It’s true. You’re a chunk.

• I’m writing this five days after you turned 9 months. Since then, you’ve started pulling yourself to standing. That baby fat is going to start melting away now; I mean, you’ll be running tomorrow. Or maybe it will just feel that way.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Elena,

Oh, sweet girl, to celebrate your eight months here with us, we gave you your first antibiotics. I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’d been fighting conjunctivitis (the highly contagious “pinkeye”) for four or five days already (I’m sorry, I don’t remember who had what when; it’s been an endless hamster wheel of boogers and vomit for four months), and we didn’t want to be irresponsible and blasé when it came to your eyes. So Daddy took you to the doctor yesterday, and she gave you antibiotic eye goop to help you shake the green eye goop. Happy Birthday!

In the past week, you’ve started sitting much more comfortably. I still put a pillow on the floor behind you lest you crack yourself, but I’ve sat you down to run things to the car and come back to find you playing with a toy, smiling at me.

Last Monday, I saw you crawl backward. For months, you’ve scooted backward on your belly, and you’re quite competent at a combination of rotating and rolling to power yourself around. But you lifted yourself onto your knees and moved backward the other day. Today, I saw you inch yourself forward, albeit on your belly. You put your toes on the ground, as if you were going to lift into downward dog (a move of which you’re capable), then pushed forward off them. You needed that bulldozer that was just out of reach.

Annie, Annie, are you okay?

Just over two weeks ago, you went to “school” for the first time. We’ve called Moss Street “school” ever since Sylvan started when he was sixteen months old, so school it is. (note: you’ll find Sylvan in two of those Moss Street photos if you look closely) You’re in the Chickadee room, where Sylvan started out. The room is smaller and cozier than the other under 2-year-old room, and I think very highly of the lead teacher, Lori. The drawback is that I have to pick you up by 2:30, which means that, with an hour commute in each direction, my work days are short, and I only have two of them a week. I can also no longer take the bus, since it only runs a couple times a day. But it’s worth it to have you in that room, I think, where you get lots of gentle care and attention.

You fell asleep on Grampa. He's under your spell.

Thanks especially to your Dad feeding you off his plate as if you were a chubby cocker spaniel under the table, you’re eating many different types of food – in chunks that are too big, in my opinion. (Daddy says that’s how you learn; I say that’s how you choke.) You eat typical baby fare, like puréed spinach and yams, applesauce, and yogurt. You’ve moved on to Cheerios and cheese and tofu cubes (a surprising hit from the first) as well, and you’ve had plenty of pizza and cornbread, which you, admittedly, can’t get enough of.

You can’t yet feed yourself finger food, but you’re close. You can pick up Cheerios, usually by raking them into your palm and holding them there with your thumb, holding up your hand in a thumbless wave. Now, how can you get that food into your mouth? You did use your thumb and index finger to pick up some Cheerios today, so the day is near when I won’t have to swing by on my way from the stove to the dishwasher to stuff another cheese cube into you.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Elena,

It noticed it first when I went in to order an after-work scone (marionberry at Eugene City Bakery – highly recommended), both to fill me up with calories and to have the opportunity to sit and fill you up. You upstaged me. I know it’s far from the last time. The barista/cookie supplier almost couldn’t make change for the woman in front of me because he was so busy watching you. This was a 23-year-old guy. He said to me, “Her expression is just so wonderful, so open.” You don’t even know you’re charming people like you are. If you can catch their eye, you smile, and they get pulled right in.

Even Tephra knows you’re calm and kind, and that’s high praise, believe me. She lets you grab her fur with your not-so-careful but ultimately benign fingers. She’ll stay in the room when you enter it, which is, let’s be frank, not the case with your brother. After stomping around after her and screaming monosyllabically, he wonders why she runs away at the merest hint of his voice. Not so with you.

Since your six-month birthday, you’ve been swimming, swinging, and sitting for the first time. After seeing that your six-month-old cohort, including Marigold and Finn, was sitting up, I sat you up. And you stayed – pretty much. You can almost get there by yourself.

We took a family outing to the just-above-body-temperature pool at the Tamarack Wellness Center a couple weeks ago. You weren’t quite sure what to think. You are, after all, a showerer rather than a bather. We just got a bathtub last week, and you haven’t been in it yet. So the pool was odd and loud, given the screaming children in the enclosed space. You just wait until I take you down the blue slide this summer.

You’ve even licked a chicken since your six-month birthday – a live one, not a drumstick. Thanks, Leslie!

You can drink from a sippy cup, although not by yourself. You LOVE cheese, but you are a good eater of everything we’ve fed you, from yams laced with spinach to bananas mixed with yogurt. In fact, usually you just can’t get enough, and you will cry in frustration if you finish a bowl of food and we get up to make more: “But I’m still hungry! Stick that spoon in my mouth now.”

Love,
Mommy

Dear Elena,

Whew, it seems like more than half a year ago that we were living in the “summer house” when I went into labor after that Market of Choice chocolate cake (that’s three Moms I know for whom it’s worked; we’ll have to work on their marketing of this particular baked good).

A short list of highlights from the last month, along with a slew of photos:

• You started to eat food.
• You started to feed yourself with a spoon (today), a mere ten days after we started feeding you. I guess you really like lentils.

Lentils and applesauce. Who needs pudding?

• You’re so close to crawling. You roll around, pretty effortlessly getting where you want to go – to touch a toy, see the fire in the wood stove, bonk your head on the stairs, get stuck under a chair. You’ve been lifting up into a plank for a few weeks, and you’ve recently started to lift your butt even higher, into a modified downward dog. Just today, I saw you get on all fours, into the crawling position.

Working on the crawl

• You went snowshoeing last weekend.

• You’re continually amused and entertained by your brother, who loves you and also likes to make loud noises that make you cry. He’s still learning about cause and effect. I’m sorry you’re his newest guinea pig.

Sylvan digs the great-tailed grackle

• You’re completely done crying just because you’re in the car.
• You weathered your six-month shots like a champ.
• If you’re crying for a reason other than sleepiness, pain, or hunger, the Itsy-Bitsy Spider almost always turns you around.

I love you,

Mommy

Sylvan took 121 pictures in 12 minutes. Here's one.

And another

There's more than one truck lover in this family

"Power hair," as Sylvan calls it. Maybe Gramma Diana said something about static electricity?