Ten and eleven months

It's been way too long, and the longer it gets, the worse it feels. Posting, I am talking about, of course.
SO much has happened over the past two months and I had so much to talk about and now, where did it all go.
In my queue for posts at a later date - which I hope will come:

• Scattering our parents ashes
• Visiting our home town and taking part in a memorial service for my mum
• Visiting our old house, which was sold three years ago, and peeking in through the front window to see what it looked like
• Flying with Isobel plus, trains, ferries and automobiles, oh my!
• Funny, weird and great things about being back in the UK, including beds AKA torture racks from HELL
• Introducing Isobel to her 7 year old cousin, Murray. He and his mum christened her Isobel McGorgeous and doted on her the whole time.
• Going back to work and leaving Isobel in the capable hands of her other mom.

And much much more...  ( I know, exciting isn't it?)

But back to the subject of the post: Isobel's last two months and the march ever forward to her first birthday!
There have been some huge strides forward. Mostly in engagement with the world, understanding of words and how things work, and crawling towards standing and maybe soon walking. Teething did not happen practically the whole month of August when we were in the UK. Which was good for everybody. But more teeth are in and on their way. She now has three visible top and bottom. And more coming in.
She surprised us all with her first non mama word - cat!
We were reading her a book about a black cat ( similar to ours ) called Slinky Malinky, and she pointed to the cat in the book and said, "cat", three times while pointing at the cat. That was followed by endless exclamations of the word  at all times of the day and night. Now she usually reserves it for when there is a cat in the vicinity. Next words were "toes" - as in, "where's Isobel's toes?" a game her cousin Murray and her auntie Chayley  we liked to play with her. Since then she has said "down" - as in "get down" and "go". This is all to her other mom's credit, because she talks to her a lot and is always looking for teaching moments. Me, I tend to be much more  of a quiet companion for Isobel. Good job there are two of us, or Isobel may have never uttered a word. Oh and the  other day she said "hi" to a passer by in the street.
In motor skills news, she is a fantastic and avid crawler and now loves to stand up, pull herself up, get in corners that she has no business to be in and crawl under chairs and tables. She crawled under a big heavy chair at the hospital the other day when I had an appointment and had to be rescued. It hasn't deterred her from more exploring.
When we were in the UK we discovered a childrens  TV series called "In the Night G.arden",  which is like the Telly Tubbies but a lot better, and she got really interested in it, especially as a bedtime ritual. Now she knows all the songs ( it's very repetitive, which is good) and claps and wiggles and dances when Makka Pakka's song comes on. If you haven't checked it out, google it. There is even an "In the Night Garde.n" app for the I Pad and phone.
The biggest highlight of the trip for me was Isobel's equanimity at all the traveling. She didn't mind being pulled in and out of the carrier so we could go through security, she made lots of friends along the way, and she loved being on the train and standing up on the seat while I held her so she could look out of the window. The Er.go carrier was an absolute lifesaver and helped her to take naps when we were on the go, and helped me keep her close and secure when we were changing trains, or walking t the store, or in the park. She never christened her little surfer dude suit that we got her for "swimming" in the sea, but she did have a ball on the beach, crawling and throwing sand and eating it as well.
She makes all kinds of sounds as she explores her verbal ability and one of these is clicking with her mouth, which we refer to as her  African Clicking Language.
Oh and the kicker - tonight she picked up the TV remote, pointed it at the TV and turned it on. She looked back at her mommy to show how pleased she was with herself. Classic!
Okay it's late and I am wiped, so here is a link to our September pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cybersue/sets/72157627576601465/

Very late but very green

Here are our green photos - taken mostly on our holiday in August in England, Scotland and Wales. When I say we, I really mean we. Susan is the mastermind behind these photos. I mostly nag her to take them and to download them and to make them into a collage. I should have said this before. I have taken some of the pictures on these posts, but most of the credit should go to Susan.

You can find a link to all our "green" photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cybersue/sets/72157627738248802/

Nine months, a fortnight, and 50 percent

Something about the weather getting so hot (and stormy too) has caused me to look back on what life was like this time last year. I remember going to the grocery store a lot and as time went on, I would say yes more and more to the offered help out to the car. I walked slowly. I sweated. I had all sorts of icky symptoms that I would have forgotten if it was not for the list I have in my I-phone that I made prior to some of my midwife and OB/ GYN visits. It makes for hilarious reading (in retrospect). At risk of a big fat TMI, my favorite note was "funny vulva" - who knew? I was doing most of the shopping at that time and I "lifted" a lot of big boxes of cat food cans at Sam's Club by not really lifting them so much as pushing them off the shelves until they dropped into my cart. On my last visit as a pregnant lady I gave in and asked a stranger to help me get the boxes into my car. Those days are over. I am back to being the lifter in the family.

And here we are, in the middle of summer, many months later, with a baby, who has the most energy of anyone I have ever met. Boy am I glad Isobel is out of my tummy! And that she came out unscathed. Especially when I think of how scary my pregnancy was, and how scared I was.

Back to Isobel and her milestones. Not sure what to call her, but infant she is not. She is getting to be a really avid crawler. Some of the fun things that she is doing are growling louder than ever before, and giggling and cackling as she crawls around. She also loves to do this thing that is half way between a shout and a drone, and often Susan will join in with her, and they will drone away together. When Susan changes note or key, Isobel will often follow suit. She loves to wave. Often at appropriate moments, like when we say bye-bye, sometimes for no apparent reason and at nothing that we can see in particular.
Her word recognition is pretty interesting. We are pretty sure that she understands mama, bouncy bouncy ( one of her favorite activities ), avocado, banana, some simple commands, and her name. When we encourage her to touch something she usually follows our direction. She has moved on from just chewing at books to opening and closing them over and over and turning the pages.
One of her favorite toys is a large chain of huge hollow colorful beads about the size of a kiwi fruit. They pop together and she can pull them apart. I have no idea what they are called, because we got them loose at a rummage sale. I was not very impressed when I first saw them, but Susan picked a winner and Isobel loves them. She especially loves to blow and call into the hollow end of the beads and make a kind of echoing sound. She will also do this with her empty happy baby cheerios container. After a search online, Susan has found out that they are called F.isher Price Snap Lock B.eads. Wow. We need to buy shares in them.

In our limited space in the apartment she usually hangs out in her room, which is basically a play room and almost completely babyproof (she sleeps with us), and the living room, which is not so baby proof. It has two features that fascinate her. One is the small flight of stairs that go up to our front door. The other is our faux fireplace that has a brick hearth and an iron "curtain" that leads to the very enticing logs and the small pieces of gravel under them. We have on our list to get a barrier for the fireplace, which we don't even use, as our tv is on the mantelpiece and we don't want to melt it. But in the meantime it's watch her like a hawk because she always gravitates towards them. We have covered the hearth with huge cushions, which she just sees as something to climb over.

Isobel loves music, loves to dance to it in rhythm and to do what we call "rock and roll" -which is when she moves backwards and forwards in time to the music and also bounces up and down. We have a drum that she likes to play and she is pretty good at banging it in time also. We have noticed that with almost every new object that she picks up, from a baby doll, to my keys, she likes to put them behind her head, and wave them side to side and back and forth. It's comical. She hasn't done it with the drum yet, which is a good thing.

On the eating front, she still loves watermelon - well, she is actually crazy about it. She also loves peaches and plums. She seems to catch more of the food in her bib than in her mouth but every morning without fail we behold the evidence in her diaper that she is indeed eating food and digesting some of it. She really enjoys going outside - whether it is sitting in a garden chair with one of us, or being pushed in her stroller. She absolutely loves the beach, especially enjoying the sand and the warm breezes. She sits down in the sand and grabs fist fulls of the stuff, and raises them up high and lets the sand fall down her shoulders and her back. She closes and squints her eyes and giggles and cackles.

We went to the pediatrician for what seems like our monthly pilgrimage - our shot schedule is basically one a month until 9 months. She declared her extremely healthy. Physically she is in the 50th percentile. Our doctor does not usually get over-excited about these numbers. She did volunteer them this time however. I have to say, I was very pleased to find that Isobel is by all measurements, average. I am not sure why. I know that she is not average in my estimation. But I wasn't upset that she wasn't higher up on the charts. To me it really doesn't matter. Average is good. She is extremely healthy, happy and apart from some teething troubles, has little to complain about.

The doctor did say that she was advanced in her social development. ( Thank god, she's above average at something !!) She said, "oh, yes, she's not in her own little world anymore - she's very aware of everything that is going on." We thought that was a bit odd, because Isobel has been social and interested since she was about two months old. We have decided that Isobel is an extrovert. She has been a social butterfly for a long time. She loves an audience. If she can't find one, she looks for one. She is social and interested with her little baby friends. Yesterday they were playing a game where they were all drinking out of each others' sippy cups. Well, we thought it was a game. We have had some lovely cuddles in the morning -especially when there have been storms and we are snuggled up together listening to the thunder and watching the lightening.

We are still trying to teach Isobel to be gentle with our black cat, who is featured in the June's Black photos. However, she just does not get it yet, and can't wait to sink both fists into his fur. So we run interference between them because we are sure that one day he will run out of patience.

If you look in the pictures from July of Red you will see Isobel with a baby doll. She really was fascinated by the baby doll at a friend's house. She picked it up and shook it and gave it mouth to mouth resuscitation. She really dominated that doll. Susan decided she needed her own baby doll, so we got her one from BabysRus. We don't think she has dominated it in quite the same way that she did the other baby doll. However she is fascinated with the tiny sippy cup that comes with the dolly.

And that's all the numbers on Isobel for the moment. She is nine months and a fortnight ( and some change, as I have been writing this post for quite some time ) and in the fiftieth percentile. Perfect!
And now for the pictures...

look at my toys!

weighing the odds

washcloth acrobatics

feet up and tongue out!

letting the sand fly!

bucket and spade!

July: Red

....In which Isobel parks her fire truck and  gives CPR to a baby doll, meets a big brown dog,  holds a red block, models her Croatian- American mommy's Balkan  roots and puts up with sharing the limelight with a few red still lifes from our house and garden.

Late is the new Black: June

Front gate; Blackie the cat; Sammy the dog; Isobel with tasty I-Phone cover chewy!

eight is great!

I am a little late in this post, but yes, as you might have guessed, Isobel has hit the eight month mark - in fact she is now eight months one week and some change.

So many things are happening so quickly now that it's hard to keep up both with Isobel and with documenting her progress. All of a sudden her awkward scooting type crawl has become a fully fledged and very purposeful crawl. She can cover great distances as we found out at church the other day. All that carpet and wood in the sanctuary was hers to discover - and she did a great job. I just had to be careful of grumpy old Pearl, the dog, who is very territorial when it comes to the area around the altar. I had to make sure that Isobel did not get too close to her in case she went into attack mode. No, we are not high anything especially church. UCC and common as muck, that's us. Another dog, not Pearl, (she is way too dignified and well trained) has been known to do numbers one and two right by the altar table. The carpet has been changed since then, thank you very much!

But back to Isobel, she is a champion crawler and she  can pull herself up to standing by herself; though she has not mastered it in her new crib,  I am sure it is imminent.  I guess you could say that this  eight month birthday was celebrated with us buying her a brand new crib. This was after a Craig's List fiasco by yours truly that involved a trip to a very bad neighborhood, the exchange of money for a very nasty crib, and the  vigorous cleaning of said crib.  "It'll keep me humble," I muttered under my breath while scrubbing off grease marks all over it ( did they keep it in the kitchen?!)The crib turned out to not go together properly, was flimsy and was relegated to the garbage while I went on line with my tail between the legs and ordered a brand new crib ( on sale, though) in Cappucino.  What coffee lover can resist a crib that's named after a favorite drink? It's actually really lovely, and is meant for "smaller people" ( i.e. my honey who is not tall) so you can bend over to put baby in the crib and not fall in yourself. It is too big for our bedroom, but that's where it is right now - by my side of the bed, looking unwieldy, but very safe. The mattress is supposed to be toxin free and came from Tar.g.e.t. Isobel likes it because it has springs and is fun to jump on. She is still wearing her beeper monitor to bed, and we have yet to re-install the Angelcare monitor under the mattress. I am not sure when I am going to feel comfortable taking them off for good.

We have also bought an umbrella stroller - after much agonizing and researching. It's a Brit.ax. Blin.k and on sale at Albee Baby if you are interested. And in transit now. It's for the trip to the UK that we are taking this summer and was prompted by the new ban on strollers over 20lbs checked at the gate by AA, which is what we are flying this summer.

And as Isobel is incredibly restless and insomniac these days we are probably going to be in the market for an amber teething necklace. It seems each month brings its expenses. Although most of her toys have been bought from rummage sales - which is a great place to shop for the older, fun, classic toys that are hard to come by. Of course I only know this because a friend of ours likes to come over and identify these cool old toys we get as something from her childhood. I don't remember any of my childhood toys and as we didn't have any siblings born after us I guess we wouldn't would we?

Another surprise is that Isobel now has FOUR teeth. One of the top ones came through almost as soon as her two bottom ones were in, and then the second top one came in slowly until  now she has a lovely two top and two bottom smile.

She has really got the hang of the whole eating thing now, and I am so glad we are doing baby led weaning and not dealing with spoon feeding her - it's more fun and she really seems to enjoy it. We put her in her high chair and give her a few different foods at a time to try and choose from ( I know, it's a big no no with the allergy people, but it has worked out fine). When she is given the choice of what to eat - i.e. sitting with us on a blanket for a picnic, as we did last week, she will grab just about anything and consider eating it. That blanket ended up covered in guacamole and salad and quesadillas - and so did she.

Some more fun things are Isobel's intensely loud vocalizations which happen when she is eating and sound like growling, or when she is around other people who are talking ( as in church when someone is speaking and everyone else is quiet!) or just whenever she feels like it. She is incredibly gleeful in the noises that she is making and can really get quite loud. Not sure how that's going to go down on the plane to England.

We think she may be going through a growth spurt / more teething as she is not sleeping very well - and is adjusting to her new crib too.  She is also going through another biting phase on my poor boobs. I have a few nasty teeth bites to show for it, which I am helping to heal with breast milk and lanolin. Her naps have become very short - and sometimes I give in and nap with her in our bed, which usually means a longer nap - but not recently. Her longest nap in her new crib has been about 25 minutes!!!! Aargh! And trying to get her to bed at her usual 8pm ish bedtime has been a disaster. She is just hyper and won't go to sleep. Tonight, thankfully, we had been out to the beach ( lots of sand got eaten and was great for crawling!) and then for Ethiopian food, so she was really tired ( and she had only slept about 1/2 an hour in naps all day!) so she got to sleep at 10 pm. That is about an hour earlier than the past few nights. It means that we stay up late so that we can have some down time.

Today a few firsts were: putting her feet in the lake ( 63 degrees and felt heavenly to me, but I think she felt it was cold), crawling on sand, eating spicy food at the Ethiopian Restaurant ( she cried!) and enjoying the Ethiopian bread with less spicy foods. She disproved the theory that once a baby eats sand she will never eat it again! This is her second time eating it! We took her to the  outdoor leisure pool a week ago and that was a first for her - she seemed quite interested in all the other waders and splashers and even though the air temperature was only about 70 degrees she did not seem to mind.

So we are looking forward to more excitement with Isobel as she moves into her ninth month. Time is flying by and we can't quite believe we are here in the summer again and last summer I was big and pregnant and this summer I am not and we have Isobel here.

Here are a few recent photos of our little sweetpea.

Jam Face!

Fun with Feet!

Check out my new crib!

Swingin' with Mama.

Swinging 2.0

What a lovely belly I've got!

Bouncy girl!

un challenge - three bizarre jobs

Firstly, thanks to all of you that responded to my whining by reaching out and leaving a comment. It is calming to know that I am not talking to myself - well I am  - but there are others who are listening. And as Dreams and False Alarms rightly pointed out, the comments mostly go to the ones who really are in deep need of support, which would not be me. I am not in the trenches anymore. For some reason, which I am really unclear about, my blog traffic has shot up in the last few days - could it be that the word "whore" in the blog title  has blessedd me with more readers than I ever dreamed of?!  So thank you, thank you, my good and faithful blog readers, and to all the perverts out there who are reading, you probably won't see the word "whore" much after that last post.

Onto the challenge: I have actually not had many jobs in my life: I was an eternal student / out of work actor and aspiring playwright until around the age of 28, and did not start my first "real" job till I was about that age. I didn't have any after or before school jobs as a teenager,  as I went to boarding school from age 14-18 and it seemed to be difficult and impractical to get a job in the holidays only- as we were away at school most of the year. So I never delivered papers, or did a lot of regular babysitting. Although I did start a little babysitting business one summer, aged 17 with absolutely no experience whatsoever and with the goal of saving up money for contact lenses. It started off as a small white postcard in the post office window advertising  dog-walking and baby-sitting ( both of which I had never done and the former being a big stretch for me as I was deathly afraid of dog poop -see references to OCD in this earlier post- ). That white card brought me an obscene phone caller wanting to know what color knickers I was wearing and wanting to "f..." me,  a slew of desperate parents who were apparently unfazed by my inexperience and a brand new pair of hard  contact lenses, which along with braces on my bottom teeth and a fabulous home made wardrobe, catapulted me into the world of semi glamorous geek instead of completely hopeless geek. Although to be fair, we didn't have geeks - we had trends and plebs, and I was a pleb.

I have yet to find the perfect job, which is both rewarding, well paying and inspiring, and I am going to take a few liberties with the un challenge and tell you about my three most interesting jobs. One of which lasted two days, one a few months and another, a few months.

When I left university after finishing my drama degree, I wanted to stay in Aberystwyth, on the west coast of Wales, where I had studied, but I had no money left, the grant had run out and I needed to find a job. I don't remember where I saw the ad, but I found myself applying for a job as a "trolley dolly" ( I think the job title was train stewardess) which was a glorified ( or maybe unglorified would be more accurate) hostess traveling on British Rail with a heavy trolley of snacks and drinks and serving passengers up and down the aisles the length of the train journey. The glamor came in the form of a uniform that really did make me look like an air hostess. Navy skirt, blazer, white shirt, jaunty red scarf tucked into the shirt at the neck, and a lovely bowler type hat that poised jauntily on the top of my head. Panty hose ( or tights in English) were mandatory and  the kind of shoes were up to you. I had seen many trolley dollies in my time, and many of them wore high heels - often red to offset the scarf - and looked just smashingly fabulous. How they maneuvered those heavy trolleys on and off the trains with no help and a drop of about a foot between the platform and the train in high heels is really beyond me. (The conductors, all male, were not supposed to help us as we didn't work for British Rail, but for a franchise, and if we wanted their help we had to bat our eyelashes and look helpless or pray that they were charitable if our eyelashes were having an off day.)  In my sensible blue highly polished flats it was hard enough. I once had to miss half of my run because I cut my hands pulling the trolley off the train at Shrewsbury. To cut to the chase, it was not such a glamorous job after all, but it did improve my mental arithmetic ( there was no register or "till"), I was the disgusted recipient of at least three episodes of sexual harassment ( including one assault and one "give me a kiss or I won't let you out of my train drivers car, where I invited you for a cup of tea" ) and I learnt everything I needed to know about the job from a wiry Glaswegian who would stop in the corridors  between the train carriages and smoke pot whenever he was on a break. And sometimes when he was not on a break. Not my favorite job, but definitely good for stories and the name itself was worth quite  a lot.
Another job I did while trying to stay in Aberystwyth after graduating with a pretty useless but very rewarding drama degree was being a life model in the art department of the university and in some community centers. It was really pretty well paid  - maybe five pounds an hour in 1991-2, and very relaxing. I would sit on a chaise lounge in a large studio that was partitioned off into the life art class "boudoir" and if it was cold there was an electric bar fire that they would turn on so I wouldn't freeze. On more than one occasion I fell asleep I was so relaxed. Staying in one position for long periods of time is not comfortable at all and involves some skill. Of course no one taught me how to sit without my legs and arms going to sleep, but I gradually figured it out. On breaks, I would put on my fabulous burgundysilky dressing gown that was something like a men's smoking jacket, and go to the break room with the artists and smoke cigarettes. There was something about it that was all quite good for my ego. The problem arose when  I discovered that the caretaker ( janitor) was a habitual  peeping tom and after I complained about him, it became uncomfortable to model as I never felt I could relax, and no one seemed to want to do anything about it.
My last bizarre job was when I came to visit the States in the summer of 1995. And it was rather fun! My friend  L, who lived here, and who I had met in Wales while she was on probably the most miserable Junior Year Abroad anyone could suffer, was big into horses. Trakeners to be precise - can't really remember how to spell that. Anyway, she spent a lot of time engaged in Trakener business, including horse fairs and shows and she persuaded me to come with her to one by getting me a job as an announcer at a dressage show in Indiana. Having an English accent lent me a certain cache - especially in dressage. I had no clue about announcing at a horse show, but I was not alone, because one of the horse aficionado's husbands had also been roped in and we both sat in the announcing booth, being able to see nothing of the dressage, but keeping informed on our walkie talkies by the volunteers at each dressage ring. They would tell us over the air who was waiting to go into the ring, who was in the ring etc and we would announce it. My buddy was a baseball fan and his way of announcing if a horse and rider were waiting to go into the ring was to say that they were "on deck". I just followed his terminology and everyone was happy. I even announced the Queen Mother's birthday over the loudspeakers one day, which really tickled all the Anglophiles. I think I made $300 that weekend plus my accommodation was paid for.  That was probably the most money I had ever made i a weekend! I think my friend was just glad to have the company and she treated me to lots of Taco Bell and Dunkin Donuts as well as the B and B. From there we drove all night to get to my first ever Michigan Women's Music Festival and lesbian intrigue and drama. But that's another story.