In my spare time

I've hit a new low. Coin wrapping. But a profitable one: any guesses on how much this stack is worth?

These are a few of my favorite...words

Though of little interest to anyone but me (and my loving husband), the vocabulary of my 17-month-old is a constant source of amazement and delight right now. It's hard to do justice to the topic without audio recordings, but sadly I'm not technologically savvy enough to swing inserting sound-bytes. So I'll have to rely on phonetic spelling to capture some of the cute factor that comes along with each of these words.

This list is in (approximate) order of acquisition:

Hi! (with an exaggerated diphthong, i.e. Ha-eeeee!)
Bow Wow
Cheese (Tssssss)
Sit (started out just Sssss, now morphed into Seht)
Bye Bye (Bah Ba-eeeeeeeeeee!)
Da Da (Da Daaaaah)
Ma Ma
More (Mah, said at the same time as the sign, and virtually indistinguishable from the preceding Ma Ma)
Milk (pronounced "Mo", and very hard to distinguish from "More")
Water (Wah Wah)
Please (originally pronounced "Bwee," now "Peez," and always accompanied by the sign and an angelic, hopeful smile)
Cracker (Krah Kaaaah)
Bath (more like "Bass")
Wash (more like "Wass")
Shoe
Bubble
Baby
Car (said with an undeniable Boston accent, i.e. Caaaaaaaaah)
Banana (Na Na, with the tongue sticking out between the teeth)
Apple (Bap-el)
Row (as in, Row row row your boat)
Thank you (usually comes out "Do Do," but you know it's thank you because it comes along with the sign)
Bus
Wheel (with an exaggerated diphthong, i.e. Whee-yel)
Beep beep!

So there you have it. With only about 25 words to express oneself, no wonder there is still so much whining and pointing. It will be fun to look back in a few months and realize how far a child can come in a short time period. I have read that between 18 and 24 months, kids pick up as many as 10 new words per day! I can't wait!

These are a few of my favorite...toys

In the spirit of my last post, and as a nod to my failing memory, today is the first in a series of logs to document various aspects of my every-changing darling. This week I thought I would start off with toys. As I have mentioned before, we don't have many, but even so, a boy has his favorites.

Much to my chagrin, the winner right now, at 2 days shy of 17 months, is the brightly colored, entirely plastic, 6-wheeler dump truck that makes beeping noises (including the high-pitched beep of a truck in reverse). The giver of this gift shall remain nameless (but you know who you are!). A close second is the smaller, but no less plastic and even more shrill, red fire truck (see Away with the singing truck! from last week). Thankfully, a few silent toys have made the list, including the ever-popular recycling bin (which, depending upon the amount of glass, is more or less silent).

Oh to be a toddler again! Next week will be favorite words, and then perhaps favorite parks the following. Are there classic toys out there that my little one is missing out on? What were your favorite toys at this age?

The passage of time

I have been thinking lately about the intense emotions that washed through me during the days and weeks after my son was born last year, and wondering whether they will return with the birth of our second: coming home from the hospital and sobbing at the dining room table, utterly unable to imagine how we would make it through the night together; a very literal and physical feeling that my heart would break in two if anything happened to my son; and most poignantly, a sharp awareness of the inexorable passage of time.

The latter feeling, which has necessarily dulled over the past year - or how could I have ever returned to some semblance of my pre-baby life? - made the deepest impression on me. It was a piercing sense of mortality, a sorrowful realization that every day that passed, my baby was different. The baby that I knew the day before was never to be seen again, and my memory of him in that state was fading quickly.

At the time, my husband pointed me to Shakespeare's 126th sonnet (and this week's poem in the left hand margin), which perfectly captures the tension between nature's beauty and ephemeral time. Upon re-reading it this morning, I am again comforted by it's wisdom.

In some ways, I miss that poignancy, and I wonder where it has gone. To be sure, the cocktail of sleep deprivation and hormonal swings that defined those early days and weeks played a big role. Now passed, many things seem more manageable, not just grappling with the relentless progression of infant development. Perhaps I have learned to suppress it myself in order to cope and carry on.

But every once in a while, I think it is healthy to reflect and embrace the sorrow of time passing. It serves as a reminder to embrace every minute, to take in the vibrancy and color of each passing scene, to be grateful for the miracle of young life and the ambivilance of early parenthood.

Highlights of the day

The delivery man commenting on the Caravaggio print in the living room.

The road construction crew just below the window taking an early lunch.

 The smell of black bean soup simmering on the stovetop.

A fall-fresh breeze sneaking in through an open window.

A call from my husband.

Discovering that the latest novel by a favorite author is just as good as the last.

It's amazing how perspective can change when you have some free time on your hands!

Away with the singing truck!

If I hear the jingle coming from my son's red firetruck ("Did you ever see a puppy...driving a red truck?" to the tune of "Did you ever see a lassie?") one more time, I might just throw it out the window. Sadly we're only on the second floor so I'm not sure this would accomplish anything - the truck is pretty sturdy. Rather than dream up better ways of doing in the singing truck, I decided to make a CD of children's songs I actually can stand to hear more than once.

This turned out to be alot of fun. The NIH actually has a website that lists over a hundred classic children's songs, with lyrics and tunes, in alphabetical order. This was a good place to start, but I also wanted to include some contemporary songs as well as some songs from old musicals or movies that double nicely as kid's songs. In the process I came across a few very clever websites and blogs that review recent children's music releases, most of them created by musically-inclined parents who found themselves similarly fed up with the red firetruck jingle. Zooglobble is one such site that I could spend hours purusing. Another is called Kids Music that Rocks.

I quickly realized that I couldn't possibly cover everything on one CD, but I have to start somewhere! So here's my first 'playlist.' My next mix will probably consist of foreign language songs, or maybe lullabies. I retrieved many songs from itunes, so in total the CD cost me about $10 to make - the rest I downloaded from CD's in my own collection.

Whistle While You Work - from the original Snow White recording

A Bushel and a Peck - Doris Day singing classic from "Guys and Dolls"

Put on a Happy Face - I am a sucker for the Dick Van Dyke version

Five Little Ducks - this is one of the few songs from a traditional "kids" CD

My Grandfather's Clock - version by Johnny Cash

If I Had a Hammer - Peter, Paul and Mary (who else?)

Little White Duck - Danny Kaye

Waltzing Mathilda - an Australian classic

La La La La Lemon - I fell in love with this song from the Barenaked Ladies kids album

Super Frog - another great discovery from the 'adult' band "Asylum Street Spankers"

Yellow Submarine - The Beatles

On the Sunny Side of the Street - recorded by Swing on a Star Band

Side by Side - version by Dan Zanes

Rainbow Connection - original Muppets recording (Kermit singing)

Baby Mine - I've never heard a more moving version than Bette Midler's from the Beaches soundtrack

You Are My Sunshine - Carly Simon recorded a beautiful rendition

Wiegenlied (Braham's Lullaby) - orchestral version to wrap things up

So there you have it. Just the tip of the iceberg but a good start, nonetheless. I would love to hear suggestions for my next mix! Happy singing!

Listening to my fortune

For the first two weeks of bed rest, I was in remarkably good spirits. I read 7 books in that span and wrote (most of) the first draft of a paper I had been putting off. I caught up on all my diapers.com ordering and stocked the baby's closet with diapers and wipes. I picked topics that were interesting to me and wrote about them every few days on this blog.

But by week 3, I hit a wall. All I could thing of was the things I couldn't do. I had no interest in blogging. I began to dread the afternoon, watching the minutes on the clock tick by until my family came home (when I couldn't pick up my son). My fortune cookie mid-week seemed like a cruel joke:

So, at the beginning of week 4, I'm doing my best to turn over a new leaf. To focus on the things I can do. Or at least, counter each can't with a can. Here's my list so far:

Can't  ->  Can:

Work out : Do arm weights (here's to perfectly sculpted biceps!)
Help out at daycare : Make a CD of favorite kid's songs for the daycare to play (more on this one later)
Cook : Relax, there will be plenty of time for making dinners that the kids don't appreciate and refuse to eat!
Host friends for dinner like we're used to : Have potlucks instead, or pick earlier times in the day for visits when a big meal isn't required

Anyway, the list could go on and on. But the mental exercise of countering each "can't" with a specific "can" is a good one, I think, and not just useful in my situation. So wish me luck. And feel free to add to my "can" list (but not the can't, thanks anyway - I don't need ANY help with that one!).