Song

Here is Pearl, singing a semi-unprompted rendition of the aforementioned Elizabeth Mitchell, followed by my version:

~* Find more songs at Mama Says Om *~

Twenty Months Old

Today, Pearl is twenty months old!

When she was a new walker and we first started taking her to the park to play on the playgrounds there, I would marvel at the older babies who could go up the stairs and down the slide all by themselves, while Pearl stumbled and wobbled along. Now, a handful of months later, she is the tot who scampers all over the jungle gym with skill and confidence. It is an amazing thing.



This month has been all about climbing! She has mastered the technique of climbing up on our large cushy couch an chair and she is completely obsessed with doing so. She doesn't understand why we let her climb onto the seat of the chairs but draw the line at clambering up on the arms to join the kitties, even after she fell off and hit her butt on the corner of her little wooden chair on the way down, ending up with a scratch and a bruise. She tests us on it over and over again.



She has also figured out how to get onto and off of the bed over and over again, as well as the dining room chairs and table!

Pearl has started singing this month! It is the sweetest sound in the entire world! She sings two songs from My Neighbor Totoro, as well as the elephant song from Elizabeth Mitchell's You Are My Little Bird album, and the belly button song. She doesn't know whole verses or anything, just sings the few words that she knows... it is very cute.

She had a well-baby doctor's visit this month where she was poked and prodded and mildly traumatized... she really freaks out when her mouth and ears are examined, poor girl. She is 32.5 inches tall, the 65% percentile for height and her head is in the same percentile. Her weight, however, is pretty low... 22 pounds, below the 25% percentile mark. The doctor wasn't terribly concerned but did want to see her in another six months to make sure she's gaining okay. Her nose, which has been stuffed up since Thanksgiving, finally cleared up this month.



Pearl doesn't often wake to nurse back to sleep midway through her naps often anymore. Instead she sleeps for about a two hour chunk at about noon, and nurses awake at the end! It is sweet to snuggle with her as she rouses herself from sleep... in the mornings I am usually too busy trying desperately to cling to sleep to see her wake.

Pearl has learned a few colors! She has yellow and orange down, the rest are about fifty-fifty. She has an art book with a painting of 'yellow' and after I noticed her pointing out that other things were yellow, I told her the names and showed her what the other colors looked like, too. She loves drawing with her crayons and painting, and we talk about what colors things are a lot.

She is getting to be more and more herself every day. She picked out her own outfit for the first time this month - bringing her owl shirt and yellow striped legwarmers to me as I was folding laundry and grunting at me until I took off what she was wearing and put on her attire of choice. I was thrilled! She lets us know what she does and doesn't want with increasing vehemence and clarity. It is so much fun to get to know her.

Mystery Solved!

We figured out how Pearl came to associate mooing with milk. We DO have a book that references it. Mr. Peach was reading her a stack of books the other night and said, "Eureka!" (or something like that).

From page 51 of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, by Dr. Seuss:

"Did you ever milk this kind of cow? Well we can do it, we know how!"

Case closed!

Back to Blue

I revamped my template! I used a set of brushes made by Jason Gaylor. Let me know if anything is broken or anything.

I Guess We've Entered that Stage of Toddlerhood in Which the Toddler Says Hilarious Things

So. For the past few months, Pearl has just loved the whole animal sounds thing. She loves her animal sounds books, looking at pictures and making the appropriate sounds, and sometimes when we're bored I'll ask her a whole slew of questions like,"What does x say?" or switch it around and ask, "What says x?" She'll do this in her sleep, too - one night right after she unlatched and rolled over she said, "Hoo hoo!" It's a owl!" and her mouth was still full of milk and her voice was all burbley, so funny and sweet.

Well, over the last few days, she has been saying, "MOOOO! It's milkies says!"

I have no idea how she came to THAT conclusion! We don't drink cow's milk or partake of any other dairy products, with the exception of my husband who does eat cow's cheese, and we don't watch t.v. or have any books that talk about this. She knows cows say moo, but my breasts? I can assure you that they have never mooed. I am terribly amused and faintly insulted. She'll pop off the breast to say it or just say it randomly. I interrogated my husband about this but he swears he has no idea how she made this association. So... what the hay?! What a silly tot.

Self Portrait Tuesday: New Year's Resolutions

Write more. Draw more. Put my hand to paper and create something... these are a few of many of my resolutions on this year's list.

More Self Portraits can be found at Self Portrait Tuesday.

A Nursing Photo

For the past few months Pearl has insisted on nursing right after we take a shower. I don't know if she likes the skin-to-skin contact which she only gets nursing at that time, or if she is just cold and hungry and wants a snack but if I try to get her to wait she has a meltdown and I have to talk her through at least putting my pants on because I for one do not like hanging around cold and wet in the bedroom.



A few days ago we took a shower in the afternoon and the light in the bedroom was nice so I brought my freshly-charged camera in to take some pictures. Then she made her demand for "m'kies" and I got some shots of her nursing by stretching and contorting myself, and bracing my camera against my shoulder, and then against the windowsill, taking full advantage of the autofocus and hoping I was pointing my camera in the right direction. I guess I could probably get some nice ones using my tripod and the timer or the remote but I liked how a few of them came out.

Happy

Today I asked Pearl if she wanted to help me put clothes away and as that is her favorite chore to help out with she was excited and nodded, saying, "Cose away!" As she danced and ran towards the bedroom in front of me as I dragged the basket of clean laundry along, I laughed and asked, "Are you happy to be putting clothes away?" and for the first time, she said, "Happy!"

While we hung up the clean laundry and throughout the rest of the afternoon she'd chant, "Happy! Happy!" and this evening we looked at some pictures of her on flickr, talking about what she was happy about in each one.

She was pretty difficult to get to sleep tonight - she's working on a new tooth and that always throws her sleep schedule out of whack - and after she rolled away from my breast for what I thought was the last time (she has gotten into the frustrating habit of rolling back over halfway on top of me and waking if I try to leave the bed) she opened her eyes a tiny bit, gave me a sleepy smile, and said, "Happy!"

At that moment, how could I be anything but?

Yep, It's January.

Winter's got me. I'm in full recluse mode, not making any effort worth mentioning to interact with my family or friends. My motivation to do anything has gone out the window and I don't have any projects started or being worked on, haven't made appointments I need to make, and the housework is falling behind. I just don't want to do anything. I haven't seen the sun shine in what feels like weeks and it's driving me bonkers, in a very low-key, unimpressive way.

(I want to say that it feels like this part of the world has fallen under the control of the Twilight Realm but I think that if I make one more comparison between real life and the video game I'm playing my husband might stop speaking to me!)

So, this is just me whining, except I don't even feel inspired to complain about the various things in my life that aren't going very well, so it's just a general mope. I guess I feel depressed but the way I feel now isn't even comparable to how I felt this time three years ago so I don't want to call it that. At least I don't feel like life is agonizing. At least my mind isn't choked with nameless dread. This is just the "winter blues"... feels more like it should be called the "winter greys" though.

I can't wait til Spring.

Come Out, Come Out, Where Ever You Are!

It is apparently National Delurking Week and as such I would love it if any readers who don't comment here do so this week and say hello! Maybe tell me what brings you here to my little corner of the interweb, and leave a link so I can check out yours.

Uberlist

I was pleased to see that the New Year's theme at Mama Says Om is Uberlist, something they did last year and I was looking forward to participating in this time around. Lofty and lowly, here are some plans, hopes, and resolutions for 2007, in no particular order:

• Create a mixed vegetable-herb-flower garden that is beautiful as well as functional
• Be kinder and more patient
• Eat less sweets
• Learn more about nutrition and put what I learn into practice
• Add lunches to the meal plan so that Pearl and I always have something yummy and healthy to eat in the middle of the day
• Be more diligent about reading nonfiction
• Keep the house cleaner
• Breathe deeply
• Learn to felt
• Go through my bazillion digital photographs and get rid of the cruddy ones
  
• Learn to knit
• Get more bookshelves
• Frame and hang more pictures
• Install a cat door
• Make a quilt for our bed
• Set up Pearl's room
• Start moving Pearl into her own bed
• Make my own greeting cards - enlist Pearl's help on some!
• Do yoga
• Learn to batik
• Start composting
• Write more
• Learn more about my camera and photography
• Go camping
• Take Pearl to a nearby big aquarium
• Bake my own bread
• Attend the UU church, at least once
• Finish Pearl's baby book and have it printed & bound
• Get braces
• Visit my brother-in-law and do some fun stuff in the city he lives in
  
• Plant morning glories along the fence
• Have friends and family over for dinner more often
• Get out of the house by myself more, and not on errands, just for fun!
• Buy only clothes that are comfortable, fit well, and are of good quality... this includes underwear!
• Be more appreciative of my talents
• Research vaccinations and decide what to do about them
  
• Brush up on my espanol
• Find a good family doctor
• Paint. Draw.
  
• Do some volunteer work
• Don't go so long between haircuts that I feel like a total frump
• Get dinner at least partially prepared during the day so I can spend more time in the evening with my husband and daughter
• Remember that all I'm assured of ever getting is this moment

Another Milestone Reached

Baby's first black eye:



She went down a slide really fast at the park the other day and flipped at the end, hitting her face twice on the side of it. Poor baby!