Arm-in (Van Buuren)

Every time that I put pickle (Eleanor’s current nickname) into the back seat of our little Volkswagen Rabbit, we go through an elaborate ritual:

The access to her rear-facing car seat (an ergonomically irritating, but rational design) is made by opening the driver’s side door, folding and locking the seat forward, and then swinging little pickle’s body around her seat back and then into it. Because her seat lies directly behind the driver’s seat, there is a lot of fiddling to get her into place without accidentally bashing her against seats, ceilings, windows, etc. It is a little like those games where you try to navigate a marble through a pitfall-ridden maze by slight tilting.

After we have cleared out all residue of toys and books, we then go through the process of getting her buckled in. Hunched over the car seat’s back, we then adjust the five point harness and snaps.

It is interesting how the repetitive language of common tasks is the easiest to pick up for a baby. Long before pickle was saying any discernable words, she would respond to us saying “arm in” by assisting (or at least not actively fighting) putting the named appendage into whatever appropriate receptacle was available. Getting dressed, this would be:

“arm in” *cheer*
“other arm in” *cheer*
“leg in”…

And we found that this helped with car seat ensconcing as well.

One thousand repetitions later, we introduced the parental inside joke of “Arm in” for one arm in the car seat harness and “van Buuren” for the other. One day pickle will learn that this is actually a pretty bizarre reference to the Dutch trance/electronica DJ.

I really love how the mythology of a family grows organically over time. We aren’t even a year into parenthood, and yet I can see the development of a cohesion that would have been difficult to predict or understand just twelve short months ago. I think I will relish the delightful unfolding of family identity over the coming years. Truly we are now more than the sum of our membership.

Yesterday, as I ran an overwhelming number of errands to prep our country house for closing of its sale (mid June, hopefully), I found that I had pushed and popped pickle in and out of her car seat  probably 20 times in one day (each time giving a brief homage to the Dutch trance mixer). Eleanor was a trooper. She calmly obliged and politely overlooked the eccentricities of her father, competently putting her arms in, one at a time.

I think our little rabbit may soon grow up into a station wagon to smooth out some of the kinks of travelling with a child. I hope, however, that we never “upgrade” ourselves out of the closeness and commonality of family. Whether it is inside jokes/silliness of things like “Dinkus”, the coping mechanisms of shared ordeals (like bunkhouses or backpacking), or custom family language like the “Wrong way pipe” and “Arm in van Buuren”, I would have it no other way.

Now I think I will go buckle baby into her seat, run an errand, and listen to trance.

_elliott

Bloomsday

Bloomsday is a 12k race that sees 50,000 participants each year. We decided to join the madness and take Eleanor. I hope this is the start of a yearly family tradition (which, by the way, all you friends and family are welcome to join us for!).

We drove into town the night before and decided to take the public transit to the race. It was a fun challenge to balance baby, stroller, and gear on a bus. Eleanor decided she LOVED busses: People! We’re moving! I’m in mom’s lap! There’s daddy with my stroller! Ooooh! Another person! Hey, there goes a truck!

Upon arrival at the downtown area, we walked to the BACK of the line-up where the strollers and wheelchairs go. This is behind the walker group.

 

Eleanor fell asleep as we began, totally exhausted by the excitement.

The race started at 9am. They let the runners go in waves of 5,000. At the back, we started moving towards the start line at 9:45. We crossed the start line some time after 10am, as many of the first people were finishing the race. They have a special tag you wear in your shoe that activates when you cross the start and then finish line, though, which accurately times you. Elliott wore Eleanor’s in his shoe.

The race is a CRUSH at first. We were at the start of the stroller line, but it was work dodging the crowds. Some people didn’t seem intent on walking very fast, including several men in drag

(they stopped for a photo op with Spokane PD – I don’t know if they wore those heels the whole race, but I admire them for trying) – and those in costume.

As Elliott noted, many of the stroller-pushing parents have been training and soon passed up many of the slower walkers. Weaving through the crowd was the game of the day.

We kept up a good clip, even up the infamous Doomsday Hill.

Eleanor finished the race at 2 hours 4 minutes, with her parents close behind.

Our new stroller did awesome (thanks mom!) and we enjoyed the walk, the fun of the event, and the wonderful Spokane day.

Reception and Baseball

This last weekend Team Lilac Pond went over the plains and mountains to Seattle for part 2 of the wedding. Sydney and Ryan, newly returned from their honeymoon in Paris, had a reception for friends and family and we went to attend.

Much of the weekend was spent tooling around the state and then Seattle, but we did have time to spend an evening at the pub with the family first, where Uncle Soren got reconnected with baby…

…and then stayed with our friends Catharine and Jim. Catharine, who used to nanny, had all sorts of fun things for Eleanor to play with – including many cat toys.

The ceremony before the reception took place at the theatre where Sydney and Ryan met.

Eleanor spent the time before the ceremony crawling around and getting caught in her dress, much to the amusement of her grandpa.

Back in Colville, Eleanor reveled in her grubbier side today at Matt’s baseball game.

As Uncle Matt played first base, Eleanor enjoyed “talking” on a play cell phone (where she picked up that idea I can only guess)

and she ate crackers that she and her cousin, Adelyn, had dropped into the dirt.

I have never seen her so dirty, but she was having SO much fun I actually felt that I really ought to find ways for her to get that dirty more often. I imagine greater messes are yet to come.

Working from Home

I admit that I used to be one of those people who thought, What do stay-at-home-parents DO all day? I still wonder that. Because at the end of each day, I think, What did *I* do all day? It’s amazing how slow the hours go, but how quickly the days fly. So I thought I’d try and recount an “average” day – but no day really is average.

On an outing to Spokane.

Elliott and I work out most mornings. Dinner gets made most days. Occasionally I do laundry, as babies go through a remarkable amount of clothes in a day. Sometimes I pick things up in an attempt at cleaning. When Eleanor is napping, I get a moment to write or make a coffee. I work in the evenings, which always provides a sudden and often welcome change of pace. Elliott watches baby. When I get home, we play, put baby to bed, and Elliott and I catch up in the evenings – if we don’t crash instead.

 

The tub is a favorite alternative to a play pen.

Eleanor’s routine changes constantly. She usually takes a morning and afternoon nap, but that is always subject to change. She loves to explore and most days spends the majority of it climbing around checking stuff out. We take a walk if the weather is nice. She also has come to request “Booooo” quite often. Translation: book, accompanied by an attempt at signing books. Eleanor asks for this most mornings first thing. Today was no exception.

Today, Eleanor surprised me by leaving her toys, crawling over to me and signing something that looked like a dance move of twisting her arms together. It took me a moment, but I realized she was signing “change” – as in, “I need a diaper change.” She was, in fact, dirty, and I promptly changed her. Eleanor has been so happy at being able to tell us what she wants (at 10 months this weekend). Borrowing the Signing Time videos from the library was a great idea.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Eleanor is going into low-power mode and needs a nap.

Wedding

Congrats to my sister, who got married last weekend! Here are some pics from the trip for your viewing enjoyment. Those on FB can see more there.

Sydney is fun to photograph. She always looks good. It's like she has a magic shield from bad pictures.

And a family pic, also. Congrats guys!

Low Power Mode

The theme of the last couple months seems to be “sleep”. Everything of importance seems to revolve around it, and it keeps cropping up in (for me) unexpected ways.

Just as Eleanor is diversifying her language, motor skills, and canon of favorite books, she is also working hard to detail her sleeping needs and “tells”.

She has more recently gotten into a habit of entering what I refer to as “low power mode”. Like a battery operated toy, she will have bursts of activity, followed by long periods of palpable fatigue. She will:

1. Be crawling on the carpet, and then droop her head to the carpet for a “short rest”.
2. Be ravenously eating Cheerios and squash (hey, it happens!) and then look transcendentally off at a blank wall for several minutes.
3. Change from a crawling, standing daredevil with a (relatively) firm grasp on accident avoidance to…a timid, accident-prone klutz with a glass jaw.

In each case, it is very easy for we parental units to tell that she is bone tired. The signs which were once subtle and complex are now as blatant as those you would find on the freeway.

The only real problems, however, are that Eleanor herself has not yet picked up on her own tiredness signals, and teething. Together, this dastardly duo have conspired to break nights of precious beauty sleep into parodies of 50’s movies:

• “The Blob” – 5 gallons per minute of teething grade snot and drool invade a pastoral pillow top, intent on consuming everything in sight.
• “The Bionic Baby Legs” – Asleep, awake-ish, and totally awake, the mechanical kicking of the bioengineered baby cannot be suppressed, so pad your internal organs and learn to sleep staccato.
• “Night of the living tooth pain” – You don’t remember going through it yourself, and so you are destined to re-live it through the cries of your child.

Some of this has been mitigated by our pre-meditated shift from co-sleeping to a dedicated crib, but some has not. It really is amazing to see the seasons of development and change that come with a new child, and the natural-disaster-scope havoc these seasons can wreak on a parent’s foregone-conclusion-of-normalcy.

But, as always, the pain is worth it. Eleanor has become a ball of cheerful, empirical energy that flits from each new tidbit of language, environment, and play like a madly-grinning bumblebee. For every “waking to an ear-piercing shriek”, there is also a “I am just going to fall asleep on you, daddy (k.thx.bai)”. And for every painful attempt to put her to bed (when she is obviously dead tired and yet will have none of it), there is a moment of being there when she wakes up (and grins like the morning sun).

With a little luck and plenty of consistent, intentional work, we may yet instill in our child some good sleep habits that will help her through the most of her life. If she ever has kids of her own, however, all bets are off.

Now, if you all will excuse me, I think it is time for a nap. I just went into low power mode there and typed a haiku with my forehead.

Longer Out Than In

Now that Eleanor is over 9 months and 9 days old, she has now spent more time on the outside of mommy than the inside. Given how readily she has accepted this great big crazy world, I think she’s happier out here. Though at nap times, she does seem to revert back to the same snuggly baby who cuddled up with daddy in the hospital.

Here are some recent pictures for your enjoyment:

Eleanor visits her great-grandparents Betty and John. Their Chihuahua dogs Pepper and Bandit were quite enamored of Eleanor.

Eleanor displays her first bout of possessiveness. Her cousin Adelyn came to visit and borrowed a book. Eleanor threw a fit like she never had before. We are working on the sign “Share.”

 

Eleanor makes sure daddy gets his morning coffee. Looks like she needs teething tablets.

The simplest toys are the best.

Eleanor has come to LOVE books. Here she is “reading” her favorite: Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear.

More books, please!

 

Eleanor has been teething like mad. Here, daddy tests out the teething ring.

No more pictures, please.

Lots more to explore out there!