How Sofi eats an orange slice:
* take one small bite
* mash rest in hands, getting juice everywhere
* put mashed slice in garbage
* ask "More?"

Once I've seen Sofi be selfish: our neighbors grandchild wanted to play with Sofi's pushcart-scooter thingy and Sofi took it away from her. But just the other day she wasn't: we were at the children's museum at the mall and she loved the ball machine, but even though it took her a long time of standing in line before she got her own balls, she started giving them to the other kids.

A couple times in a row last week I heard someone say that you're a bad parent if you nurse/rock your baby to sleep and then put them in the crib. You're tricking your baby, they'll be upset when they wake up in the dark, blah blah blah. Screw you people! It works. And I think babies are smarter than you give them credit for: sure, the first night they wake up and cry. Maybe the second night. But after a while they figure it out - "Hmmm...if I'm given a bath and put in my PJ's and fed in the nursery it means I'm going to end up in the crib."

Also, one of the books on sleeping, the one that says "Make sure your baby naps plenty during the day if you want them to sleep well at night", is a crock! My anecdotal evidence is that lots of napping during the day => trouble sleeping at night and little napping => good, long night's sleep. Mark Nau: "The only way to get something published is to say something wrong." Case in point.

Babysitter?

People act like it's easy to find a babysitter. I find it kind of intimidating to find that person you're going to trust your daughter with.
Anybody reading this from Seattle know a good one? jdfristrom@gmail.com

Entertaining Sofi, Part 2

 
She demanded I give her the guitar. But I'm afraid she's just not old enough.

We did get her a new keyboard that she likes, though. Unlike her previous one, which stopped the rhythm track when she pressed a key - it was like it was punishing her for trying to play! - this one keeps right on going. And it can play two note chords! All for $20! Science marches on. 

Entertaining Sofi, Part 1

 
Trying to wean Sofi means I've got to find ways to entertain/distract her when she wants to "snack". I got this idea because I thought I heard her say "bubble." We've gotten her down to four feedings a day. I know, that's not very impressive. 

Just Realized

I never put up a link to my wife's blog. Well, there it is now, on the right. paper-cat.blogspot.com, not to be confused with papercat.blogspot.com, which is something else.

Just Realized

I never put up a link to my wife's blog. Well, there it is now, on the right.

Grass

Jesus grass grows fast - we've only been here two weeks and our lawn's already a jungle. Is that just a thing up here or is it like that everywhere? I've never taken care of a lawn before, really.

Vomit

Twice now we've tried to let Sofi cry it out in the crib and she did to the point of throwing up. None of the books on sleep training say what to do about this. I'm thinking she just wins. We're her puppets. From here on out she sets her own bedtime and gets to sleep in our bed if she wants and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

Sitting

 
Sofi likes to sit - I guess so she can imitate grown ups - but it's not often you find something just the right height. When we do, she likes to sit on it, stand up, sit again, stand up, sit again, over and over.
This little herb garden outside our house is perfect. 

Aptitude

We're already wondering what Sofi's going to be when she grows up. An artist? When we draw with her she hands the crayons to us and makes us draw. An engineer? When we play on the computer she puts our hand on the mouse and makes us do the interacting. A musician or dancer? Maybe! She loves pressing the buttons on her musical toys and then bouncing and stomping and spinning and waving her arms while the music plays. She's been dancing since before she started to walk, I think I mentioned in an earlier post. I've set up her musical toys in a sort of baby-Rick-Wakemanish horseshoe; she usually only plays one at a time, although just now, this morning, she had two going at once. Very avant garde.
So now I'm imagining that we'll push Sofi into becoming a rock star and then live vicariously through her. You've heard of soccer parents? We'll be rock star parents. Or something.

New Stuff

Sofi's sitting in a half-lotus on the couch in her pj's right now; first time we've seen her sit like that. It's very cute, trust me, but I'm too lazy to take a photo and upload it.

Lately she's gotten pretty good at crawling off the couch - turning around and letting her legs dangle and then sliding off.

She loves to ride in the car: whenever I take her out for a walk she walks straight to the car and pushes against the passenger door. Sometimes I'll give in and drive her around, but she wants mama to come too: if we don't bring mama she'll start saying "mama" "mama" "mama" and get upset.

Sometimes she doesn't want to get out when we arrive at our destination. "No." "No." "No."

"No" is probably the word that she can articulate the most clearly and perfectly. It would be annoying if it wasn't so freaking cute!

Babble

Lately Sofi's babble sounds like a tape recorder in reverse. I'm tempted to record it and play it backwards just to make sure she's not saying "here's to my sweet Satan"...

On My Head Be It

Zoe's become an outdoor cat whether we wanted her to or not; she keeps darting out any open door. We need to get her collared and microchipped, I guess.

Bill told me something like a million songbirds a year get killed by outdoor cats. "On your head be it," he said.

I didn't think Zoe had it in her to kill a bird anymore - she's too old and lethargic, I figured. But while we were eating our chinese food in the backyard today, we noticed that Zoe was playing with a dead canary-like bird, tossing it in the air and then batting it around.

My reaction: Awww...Zoe's first kill in the wild. She's not totally ruined by domesticity.

Cathy's reaction: Aaauuggggh! I can't watch! Get her away from me! Bird killer!

We moved to the front porch and continued eating our cripsy duck.

Deception

We haven't really lied to Sofi much yet. But just today, as she was angling for our ice blended mochas, I thought - hey, since we're trying to wean her (we've started trying again...we tried a few months ago and gave up), maybe we should give her some ice blended "mocha".

Blended her the milk and ice, added just one tablespoon of chocolate (you can barely taste it) and, of course, no coffee. Brought it in, "Mmm...this ice blended mocha sure is good."

"Can I have some?" Cathy asked. And then we gave it to Sofi and Sofi started drinking it up.

"We lied to our baby," Cathy said. "Hey, Sofi, you know that's a 'baby' mocha, right? There, now we aren't lying to you."

Nursery

It required destroying the rest of the house as we frantically upended boxes looking for key items, but we got the nursery to feature complete last night. Key items included a lamp (always did her bedtime feeding with that lamp on), a portable stereo (always listened to "Bedtime With The Beatles" during her bedtime feeding), and a humidifier (we don't even put water in it anymore, we just use it for white noise). They're always in the last place you look.

Happy Baby

Sofi seems to really like it here. More space to play/spin around in. And she likes to walk out into the street, and it's not a problem! Because cars almost never drive on this dead end street. So as long as I'm with her she's safe. Stepping into the street wasn't an option in LA; I frequently had to play defense to prevent her from making a move in that direction. Still, even though I know it's safe up here, I get a tense feeling when we're in the street together...

Ghost

Even though Tony died over a decade ago - he's been dead longer than I've known him - his voice still nags at me, particularly in the supermarket. Old arguments about which pasta or salsa to buy come to the surface. Also when I get up in the morning. "Why don't you just get up?" he used to say, infuriated that I would sleep through class...not because he cared about me missing class; I think he used to lie awake wondering if I'd get out of bed after I shut off my alarm or if I'd just fall back asleep again.

Zen

I used to think I was fairly Zen - mellow, easygoing, patient. It seems that compared to the average Washingtonian that's not the case - the traffic lights take longer to turn here, people in line muse over which coupon in their coupon book to use, everyone drives slower, and my patience is tried. I've gone from being Mr. Zen to Mr. whatever the opposite of Zen is.

The Move Is Done

I don't know what's worse: the stress of moving yourself or the stress of wondering if your mover is going to screw you. Compared to horror stories on the internet we got off light; one of the doors in the old place had the paint scratched to shit ("See? I told you I could get your couch through the door without taking it off its hinges.") and the mover more or less extorted us for money on this end ("Well, I dunno if my truck can make it around this tight turn. It'll be a risk, and if we get stuck it'll cost a lot of money, but tell you what, for $200 we'll give it a shot, and that way you won't have to pay the $780 for the shuttle.") I talked him down to $150. Woo. Bill said, "I can't believe you paid him! You're part of the problem!" Well, I didn't want to get into an adversarial relationship with the guy who had ALL OUR STUFF. I was pretty sure if I called him on it, or called my rep at Allied it would just piss the guy off and then he'd "accidentally" damage all our crap. End result was, as far as we can tell, none of our stuff is lost, and it looks like we've gotten away with under $100 worth of damaged stuff. The way I figure it, the movers just prenegotiated themselves a nice tip, and then did a pretty good job earning it.

Now we just have to unpack.

View From Our House

 
This is the view from the house we just moved into. An "across the water view", Bill calls it. We liked it so much we don't mind that the interior of the house is totally seventies.
In fact, after living there for a day, I've got to say, the seventies feel is actually nostalgic and heartwarming; it reminds me of visiting friends' houses as a kid.
The whole place feels unreal; going from my condo located between a picturesque airport, refinery, and sewage treatment plant, suddenly being surrounded by this - this place looks like one of the "utopia planet" matte paintings from Star Trek or some other science fiction tv show. And looking across the street just looks Brady Bunch or something.
So. So pretty. But so cold! We went for a walk this morning and our ears froze off. A storm blew by, dropped gallons of water on us - right at the moment the trucking company came by with our cars - and then cleared up five minutes later.
Rather than wait for our furniture to arrive (T minus 4 days, still) we just went and bought a mattress, one of these "memory foam" things. Felt really good in the store - we did the "fifteen minute test" that Consumer Reports recommended - but had trouble sleeping. Maybe it was because Sofi was kicking me in the head, maybe it was because we left a light on for her, maybe it was because it's just too darn quiet - used to sleeping next to an airport! And then in the morning achey as all hell. And no coffee - the coffee maker is en route. And from the time I woke up (at 6) and now, when I'm finally drinking my latte (5 PM), it was one thing after another - tried walking to the coffee shop but Sofi got too upset and we retreated; Cathy needed to take a shower; Sofi needed milk; the trucking company said they were going to arrive in fortyfive minutes; had to ferry both cars from the freeway exit to our place; by this time it was Sofi's nap time; she napped for three hours, some kind of record! And finally, here we are.
One last thing: Seattle and Bellevue are a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Fortunately, all the streets are named after famous numbers, otherwise I might get really lost.