August 22nd, 2008
Robin and I went to the neighborhood park today, using the stroller. Hannah and Dante both flipped out when they realized what I was doing. I could still hear Hannah howling in misery as I was leaving the court, but I think Dante had stopped scrabbling at the window by then and was just whining a counterpoint to Hannah.
It’s a wonderful park. It’s very small, barely larger than a large backyard. In the front half, a paved path curves under shady trees to an old basketball hoop before looping up a hill to a swingset and horseshoe area. Beyond the basketball court, a slope dips down into a bowl-shaped area, almost entirely carpeted with lush green grass. Giant old trees grow on the perimeter of the bowl, except for the far edge, where a fence prevents the unambitious from wandering into the gully of Maple Creek. It’s almost always cool and shady in the bowl, with the sound of running water from the creek. There’s a big wooden and metal play structure on a bed of rounded gravel, and some large lumps of wood that I imagine kids must climb all over.
Last time we came there was almost two months ago. Robin mostly sat on the grass around the basketball court, pushed a ball around, and tried to eat immature maple seeds. He hadn’t really mastered crawling then, of course.
Today, we went down into the bowl. I put Robin in the grass and went to sit on one of the benches. He complained to himself a bit and then hustled over to me. On the way there, he noticed The Structure.
OK, I lie. He actually noticed The Gravel. He climbed up into it. He found a stick and stuck one end in his mouth for a fraction of a second before rejecting it with a scowl. He reached down and dug his fingers into the stones. And then he spent the next half an hour trying to empty the bed. Dig hand into gravel. Fling hand out. Gravel flies out of bed onto grass. He especially liked it when he found a storm grate in the grass that the gravel clattered against when he tossed it. Judging from the amount of gravel around the bed, he’s not the only child who’s engaged in this effort, either.
Right before we went to the park, I tried to feed him a snack. But all day, he’s been throwing his food on the floor. And all week, he’s been throwing his toys out of his crib (or sometimes back in, when he’s outside). So maybe he had something to work out of his system.
He was very intense about it, in any case. There were few smiles. For a while we had a little competition, seeing if he could throw gravel out faster than I could throw it in. If anything, this made him more driven. However, he did seem to appreciate my attempt to show him how to not throw like a baby. And he kept occasionally clapping his hands while holding rocks.
But the gravel playdate came to an end when Maximum Baby Troublemaking went head-to-head with Mommy Eyes In Back Of Head. He scurried away from me and when I caught up with him he gave me a big, closed-mouth grin. Uh-huh. After I fished the rock out of his mouth, we went and sat on the bench, and shared my (his) water.
It started with me offering him the Camelbak, as usual. He had some. Then I had some. Then he grabbed the bottle and had some more. Then he pushed it at me. I had some. He grabbed it back, had some more. Then he shoved the straw in my mouth, staring at me intently. I’m afraid I giggled at him, and he took the bottle back, sipped, forced it back on me. This little game ended when he started dribbling water out of mouth in his efforts to make sure I had some. We had to save some for the walk home, anyhow.
Finally, I climbed the hill of the bowl and sat at the rim, and encouraged him to crawl up it to me. And he found out just how hard it is to balance on a slope when you’ve never done it before. He got a third of the way up, decided to take a break, sat up, and half fell over. Sat up. Fell over the other direction. Finally managed to find his balance, pulled up some grass, and then hustled up the rest of the hill to me.
Then we went home and I had to push him up hills. He liked that.
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August 21st, 2008
At work, people look at pictures of Robin and then say to Kevin, “How the hell did you get such a cute kid?”
Anyhow, Robin pulled the driver out of his super shapes-and-sounds truck and lay on his back going ‘rrrrrrr. rrrrr. rrrrr.’ at it, which is very much like the sound his favorite button on the truck makes.
He played with his xylophone while his baby laptop was singing to him, as if he was trying to play along.
He also totally climbed on the guest bed without any assistance at all, not even somebody being on the bed. Then he lay on it giggling and kicking. Unfortunately, he still tries to get off things head first, and there’s a nasty ledge on the bedframe which is useful for climbing but painful for hitting on the way down. I hope he works out the safe way to get down soon.
I played WoW this evening at the table in his room while he played on the floor around me. We both really enjoyed it. He spent ten minutes flipping through my knitting book and while he bent some pages, nothing got torn. I was impressed, especially since my favorite of his board books has been chewed apart.
I’m constantly amazed at how confident and aggressive and determined he is. How proud he seems when he achieves something he’s been trying to do, how well he communicates despite having no words and little formal body language. I laugh because he never goes around obstacles– he either pushes them aside, or goes over them. Headfirst, always headfirst.
I took him to the park yesterday and put him on the grass. He sat still, looking around, for some time. Then he set off across the yellow-green grass, crawling between clumps of dandelions and pulling off the deadheads. He crawled quite a long distance before getting tired, more than three times the length of our house. Then he pulled himself up on me and I picked him up and we went home, and he crawled some more.
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August 20th, 2008
The cats love Robin’s room, even if they only tolerate Robin. Actually, maybe Demon loves Robin, too. It’s hard to tell with Demon. But he lets Robin lay on him, which seems like a good sign.
Yesterday, Raven was in Robin’s room with Robin, and the childgate was up. Raven is lazy and fat. He wouldn’t jump the gate to escape, even though he wasn’t really pleased with the way Robin barrelled over to him giggling every few minutes. Raven squeezed under the guest bed, which must have been a tight fit for him, and he could have hidden there all day. But instead he had to keep coming over to sit next to the gate. Robin would grab him and hug him. Raven would squeak and slink away.
Later, I lifted Robin over the gate and brought him into the office with me, because he’s a whiny kid sometimes. I shut the office door and let him tool around on the newly clean floor. Next door, I heard a thump.
“Ah,” I thought. “Raven just needed a run-up.”
A moment later, I started hearing this ‘boing… boingboingboing’, over and over again. When I investigated, I saw that Raven was still stuck in Robin’s room, and the gate was still up. And downstairs, in the foyer, Dante was repeatedly dropping a light-up bouncy ball– some old loot from my IT days– that he’d stolen from Robin’s room. He looked up at me. He kind of pushed the ball away, lay down and put his head on his paws. It wasn’t lighting up when he dropped it, anyhow.
He hasn’t given up, though. I found it downstairs again, that evening.
PS. I eventually let Raven out.
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August 20th, 2008
Robin has learned ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’.
Explicitly, he’s learned that when we tell him ‘Say mama!’ or ‘Say dada!’ that it’s his job to blow a raspberry. He really believes that those instructions mean ‘blow a raspberry’. He’s very consistent.
Kevin started the raspberry exchange game. Pbbbt, went Kevin. Pbbbbt, went Robin. Pbbbt, went Kevin. Pbbbbbbbt, went Robin, and grinned like a crazy thing. Pbbbt, went I. After a startled look, Pbbbt went Robin.
From there, it was ‘hey, he’s in a mimicking mood, let’s see if he’ll say mama or dada!’. No. He learned that ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ are words for ‘raspberry’.
The other day, Michelle was teaching him to say ‘watch’ because he was playing with her watch. He made a spirited effort: ‘tch. tch.’ Later, Kevin observed that nobody Robin lives with actually wears a watch. That’s okay. I’m telling him my pedometer’s a watch.
The most talking-like event so far has been the dog situation. He has two dogs, plus a book about dogs. Cathy and I were reading it to him and he kept looking at Dante and then saying ‘do’ as we pointed at the book. Of course, ‘dadadadadadadadadadaadadadadada’ is his most common vocalization so it took a keen ear to pick out that this time, ‘do’ had meaning behind it. Kevin says it doesn’t count unless he says it without prompting, or manages the g-sound at the end.
When he’s wailing, he’s managed to sound like he’s screaming ‘mamamamama’ but that’s been true for a long time– I think it’s an artifact of wailing through tears. Recently it also sounded like ‘nonononono’ but since he seems to have only a shaky grasp of ‘no’ in other situations I doubt it was intended.
Just now he started crying because he couldn’t get into his crib to take a nap. My child is weird.
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August 20th, 2008
- Take pictures of overgrown backyard before the cleanup crew Cathy hired show up even though it hasn’t stopped raining since she left
- Color with Robin
- Put away laundry
- Edit 10 pages
- Eat something despite lack of appetite
- Figure out loresheet requests for Ptolus
- Write blog post
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August 12th, 2008
OK, Cathy gets to insist on my title spelling since she took the picture.
He likes to stand on his head
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August 12th, 2008
I’m too thirsty and worn out from Cathy’s cleaning agenda and my dog’s ridiculous ability to contort her paraplegic self, oh, and from said 365-day-old to not lolcat my language. Sorry.
Tomorrow– that is, today after I sleep for a few hours– we’re taking Hannah to the vet again. Then Kevin is taking the day off and we’re going to go to Ranch 99 where we will let Robin ride mechanical horses, and then maybe we’ll go to the park. Later, there will be presents and cake. And probably pictures. And maybe even video, except I never have time to edit video. Maybe a very, very short or very. very long unedited video.
Technically he’s already been given a number of presents. But tomorrow will be the bulk. He’ll ignore most of them. But I bet he’ll like the cake.
Maybe we’ll get us adults some champagne, too. It’s been a beautiful year.
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August 9th, 2008
and wanted to alienate all my friends, I would post a picture of what I must now gaze into at least twice daily. Hannah’s amputation site is the stuff of nightmares. I miss the stitches. My dreams are a mix of Braid and the wound, where I rewind my brain over and over trying to not look.
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August 8th, 2008
The tail dock didn’t really heal closed. On Monday we took her in for her stitches removal appointment. They said ‘hm. leave in another week’. On Tuesday, she pulled herself out of her cage when the door was left open. 9 hours later, I realized she’d pulled her stitches out then, too. There wasn’t really any blood, but you could see disturbing white glints when you looked at the open wound. Emergency room and associated costs, ho!
They put in more stitches late Tuesday night.
Yesterday afternoon, I checked on her and some of the stitches had snapped. Gaping injury, disturbing glints of white, etc. Emergency room ho!
They kept her over night and installed special loop sutures so we could apply and regularly change a wet to dry dressing. I guess this is one of the problems with antibiotics! Antibiotics keep infection away but they /don’t/ stop tissue from dying. Dead skin doesn’t hold stitches well.
She’s also developed enough upper body strength/flexibility to get to her tail area without curling her back end around. So she’s in a cone collar. And she’s an angry, angry dog. She has come to TERMS with her handicap, and with having a human pair of back legs and she is READY to SCOOT AROUND so why are we keeping her down?
Dumb dog.
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August 5th, 2008
I have finally acquired a pressure cooker– the aluminum 6 quart Presto one. Even just cooking a potato, the scent it puts off is great and the flavor is so much more intense than a microwaved potato. The pot roast I’m making now smells heavenly. It really brings back memories of my grandmother’s house, which is where I first encountered the device.
Plus, the very mechanical way it operates is fascinating. It makes me think of steam engines– the pressure regulator is a loose metal knob that rocks and rotates to release steam, and is heavy enough that it only rocks when the pot reaches 15 psi.
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