Very sad news

My Aunt Thelma died this morning. We're all sad and upset. Between that and the funeral, I probably won't be posting for at least a week.

Another Auntie Jen photo

Gag me with a spoon

"Babies are gross," says Aunt Nikki(with an affectionate smile). After helping me feed May, you can see why.



"What's this for?" The cognative processes are slow sometimes.





May goes Valley Girl retro with an attempt to gag herself, literally, with the spoon.



"We are not amused at your pallid attempts at humor."



Now if we could just get her to do this with food on the spoon, we'd be golden.

Best seat in the house

Friday

Friday was a sort of wash out, all round. May and I went to the gym for the first time together for "Mommy and Me", which I'd taken to be a low energy yoga/strength class. Instead, it was a rebound class. (Rebounding, in case you aren't familiar with this latest yuppie exercise craze, is using a trampoline to do cardio.) For obvious reasons, new and nursing moms aren't so hot at the rebounding thing. At least, this nursing mom wasn't.

Then May refused to nap. At all. Cranky baby. Cranky mama.

Finally, a trio of brutally fast and dangerous thunderstorms tore through the West Somerville-Medford area -- knocking down large trees, power lines, etc. There was even a funnel cloud! (The Mayor actually asked Gov. Romney to declare us a "disaster area.") This wouldn't have been such a big deal for us, except that last night was the night I chose to go out without May for the first time. My friend Jenna threw a board games party, the whole point of which was that Jenna and I would finally get to play Book Lover's Trivial Pursuit, since everyone else refuses to play it with us.

But, because of the storms, no one showed up until after I had to leave to nurse May.

Still, Jenna and I played with her roommate. I got one piece of pie before I had to leave on the question, "Which anti-Catholic author of 'His Dark---'" at which point I cut Jenna off with "Pullman! Philip Pullman!"

(I liked the first of the trilogy and hated the other two, in case you care

Today has started off better, with breakfast with the Hobermans and the reckless decision not to do any laundry! Living large in Somerville!

Cinnamon!

I applied my inner foodie to the issue of eating and came out smelling like... well, like cinnamon!

I was feeding May oatmeal yesterday and she was eating, but without a lot of enthusiasm. (Apple sauce had been met with gagging and spitting and looks of dismay.) Doing the whole "Look, Mommy likes it!" routine, I got a mouthful of her food.

Is there any food more boring than plain oatmeal? Library paste has more flavor. Seriously. I've eaten library paste (on a dare in the third grade) and it's got more flavor.

Staring at this lumpy bowl of blandness, I thought "I need to make this better." My usual oatmeal accoutrements are cream, honey, and a big dash of cinnamon. Also, like any other grain, oats taste better salted.

Well, babies can't have salt. Or sugar. Or honey. Or cream.

But they can have cinnamon!

Or, at least, none of my books say they can't have cinnamon. So cinnamon it was and she ate quite a bit more than she'd been eating before.

Next, I'm going to get better tasting applesauce. My god, what if they made the applesauce out of Macintosh. Or worse, red delicious.

Next, nutmeg on the rice cereal.

Speaking in tongues

Or rather, speaking of tongues... not that we were, but I'm about to. May's got a tongue thing going on. She sticks her tongue out a lot, often to one side of her mouth like she's concentrating really hard on something. You nearly expect her to lick a pencil point -- something I've never understood. (Especially since the manuever dates back to when pencils really had lead instead of graphite. Heavy metal poisoning anyone?)

I've tried to take a picture but haven't succeeded yet.

It's finally cooled down some in the city, so May and I have been out for several walks already today. She seems to have her cuteness turned up to 11 lately -- seven people stopped me to tell me what a wonderful, ahppy, beautiful lovely baby I have. And that was just between here, Starbucks, and Porter Square Books and back. (Porter Sq. didn't have story hour this week. I finally make it there on time and they didn't have it this week.)

What's neat is that everyone who stopped me to tell me how cute she was had a different native language: Italian, African something, Hindi (I think), Spanish, something that wasn't Russian, Chinese, some other Asian language, and English. As a monoglot (an embarassed monoglot), I love that May hears dozens of lanugages every day. How many othe rkids get called "bellissima" and "bonita!" and (these are phoenetic translations) "aiko" and "andrea" and "char-roo" and "oh my God, she's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen!"


Maybe she will get to peak in many tongues whn she's an adult.

More May photos

And a shout out to Mike for more May snaps, including the one below. Click here for more.

Summer in the city

A hot day like today is particularly hard to take after a nice dip in the ocean at Short Beach yesterday. Well, Christopher took a dip. I'd forgotten to buy a bathing suit (mine is several sizes out of date) and May isn't quite the water baby her daddy is. We did dip her feet in the water and she only cried for a second.

She cried a lot more when we squished her toes around in the mud.

We drove down to Short Beach for many reasons -- to celebrate two birthdays and to to see Christopher's Aunt Diane who has come all the way from Hawaii. Since one of the birthdays happened to be hers, so much the better. One was also Betty's but in a totally unfair move, we made Betty throw her own birthday party.

Which was doubly unfair since Betty just got a new granddaughter on Friday -- Lucy Paikea, little sister to Ella. Congrats Dana and Owen.

May did well on the trips down and up. She's grown longer (taller?) in the past few days, I swear she has, and her sleep schedule is finally getting back on track after the trip to NJ.

I know I promised the extemporaneous walk song, but I am going to save that till tomorrow.

The Panda Bear song

Here are the canon verses:

Chorus:
Look up there. There's a panda bear.
There's a panda bear and she's looking at you!

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
What do panda's eat? They eat bamboo.

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
Who do pandas love? They love Mayhew!

(Chorus)

Now, some new verses we've come up with.

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
Where do pandas live? By the Wang Pu!

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
How do pandas dance? Two-by-two!

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
Why do pandas sing? They just do!

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
When do pandas eat? Half past two!

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
Why do pandas cry? You would too!

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
What's the panda's name? Ling Lang Lu.

(Chorus)

Look up there! There's a panda bear.
Where do pandas poop? In the zoo loo.

Next -- the latest version of "The Extemporaneous Walk Song:!

Why you shouldn't let a six-month old open the mail

We weren't going to order from that catalog anyway. To see more May photos just click here and then, when you arrive at that page, click on "View slideshow."

Busy and sad couple of days

It's raining here in Boston, which is pretty well suited to our mood. My Aunt Thelma has not been doing well and we're all very sad. She's in the Elms of Cranbury right now and our thoughts and prayers are with her.

We're also very tired. We decided to take a trip to visit Aunt Thelma and Robin and Noel (and Emily and Matthew) in New Jersey on Monday. Christopher, May, and I made the roundtrip from Boston to the hospital at Rutgers University and back in just under 26 hours -- that's over 500 miles, according to Fraulein's trip-meter.

(Special shout out to the Hobermans who loaned us a pair of coolers so we could bring food to Robin and Noel. We own a cooler, we know we do, we just don't remember where....)

Also, on Sunday, Christopher and I saw a condo that we liked well enough to entertain the idea of putting in an offer. Alas, several other people had the same idea and there's a bidding war going on, so we're out of the running before we even started. (It was a nice condo, but not worth the asking price, we felt. Others, apparently, don't mind 60 amp electricity, wiring a half century old, a furnace that predates WWII, and I kid you not, cast iron plumbing. Not to mention the lead paint.)

Nothing much to report with May, other than she's taken to gnawing on the cover of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" a lot. She handled the long car ride with her usual grace and style, only minimal complaints. Her teeth are getting bigger every day and she's clearly making massive cognative leaps.

Today we go to the farmer's market and buy some asparagus for her dinner.

A collection of totally random other things:

Nikki has found us a website that lets you put your entire library online so others can view it. www.librarything.com. We're considering uploading our personal library catalog to it.

Found a cool Davis Sq. t-shirt by walking by the guy who designed it and saying "Hey! I love your shirt!"

All I want for Chrsitmas....

...is my two front teeth. May's gotten a second tooth in next to her first one. There are now two nobbly little sharp bits of bone sticking out of her bottom gum.

She also sat up in a high chair for the first time yesterday -- Nikki and I went out to a Chili's and May spent the whole time sitting there and chewing on the hand rail. (I swabbed it down with Purell first.)

We have also seen evidence of "mobility with purpose." A toy was out of her reach the other day and she deliberatly rolled over and over until she got to it. That's a big cognative leap. She's also much more aware -- interacting, laughing, reaching.

Our camera is without battery, but soon we'll be posting a picture of May and her new favorite toy.

Getting ready to take a bite out of life

Mayhew has her first tooth!

As all have seen in various and sundry photos, May has show an inordinate amount of interest in biting and chewing on things...particularly bottles of cold water. We thought she was teething, but other such teething cues have been going on since March (or early January even). This morning though, on a whim, I decided to check May's gums for signs of erupting little chompers. Sure enough, the tinniest little bit of bone is peeking through on her left front bottom jaw. And I'd swear that that the thing is larger now than it was when I first discovered it.

May is taking this new experience of having bits of her skeleton suddenly burst through her skin with surprising dignity and calm. If I were her, I'd be freaked out at the whole process. But to her, I guess it's no stranger than a summer rainstorm or seeing fireworks for the first time.

May's first solid food

No, not a chair. May ate oatmeal yesterday. Her first solid food.

Christopher and I did a lot of research on the whole "first foods" issues -- there's conflicting evidence, but the latest trend seems to be towards meat for a first food. But when we asked our fabulous pediatrician, Dr. Berkowitz-Shelton, he said, simply, "You know, we don't really know. Whatever is best and easiest for you."

With that in mind, we picked oatmeal on the assumption that May probably knows what oats taste like already. (I have a fondness for oatmeal and Cheerios and oatmeal cookies and the like.) Also... How to put this? The resulting gastrointestinal processes would be less emphatically noticeable if we fed her cereal rather than meat.

So we went into Central Sq., avoided the raving Brazilian soccer fans, picked up some organic baby oatmeal at the Central Sq. Harvest Coop, and mixed up a batch with iron-fortified formula. (Didn't want to pull out the breast pump.)



Since May is actually very handy with a spoon and always shoves it straight in her mouth, we let her "feed" herself -- putting some oatmeal on the spoon and then handing it to her. As you can see, she entered into the experiencing with a lot of enthusiasm. If not a lot of accuracy.

We'll continue on oatmeal for a while and then move to other things like applesauce, pears, bananas, carrots, and asparagus!