radish times

Time is passing so fast. Katya and Vanya are growing in waves and bounds. It is quite amazing to be part of it.

At 16 months, Vanya has a driving determination to do everything his sister does regardless of the two year difference between them. Hence, he is climbing stairs by holding the hand rail and straightening one leg after the other. He is swinging on the big kid swings, climbing up ladders and sliding down any and every slide in the playground. He eats beautifully with a fork. He demands candy from the candy bag high up in the cupboard. He yells “mahhhmah, mahhhhmah” just like Katya. He likes to sit on big chairs and swing his legs. And now, he loves to brush his teeth (or tongue as it may be). If Katya get something he doesn’t or gets to do something he doesn’t, he forces his small little body into your face crying “me, me, me, me!”

Added to these things he is also developing a little repertoire of his own things. When it is time to go out, he often brings his shoes to someone to get help putting them on. When he is done with that, he brings the grown-ups their shoes so they can get ready. Today he brought his grandmother her sweater so she could get ready. When he has to go out of the room to get something (particularly at story reading time before bed) he holds up his pudgy little pointer finger, nods his head as if to say “you understand,” and says “min’t, min’t” (“be back in a minute”). Then he runs out of the room and back in again.

He is anxious to communicate with either signs or words and gets a thrill whenever anyone understands him. He routinely says “ta ga” (thank you) with a slow nod of his head if you give him something. A few days ago he asked me to change his shirt by doing the “change diaper” sign and tugging on his shirt. Tonight, he got me to push his chair in at the table by saying “puh me, mama, puh me.” Lately he has taken to muttering to himself “dubbahdubbahdubbahdubbah” over and over again and he gets a huge kick out of it if someone says it back to him. He has also developed the strange habit of liking to have his tongue cleaned. If he is eating something that he doesn’t quite finish swallowing, he’ll stick out his tongue until someone wipes it off with their finger.

Katya just started pre-school two days a week. The beginning was a little rough for all of us. Katya was fine the first day. Peter and I brought her to the classroom, stayed a few minutes and left. The second day, Katya cried and cried when I finally pulled myself out of the classroom. It was much harder to leave than I ever anticipated. The first several days that she was in school I involuntarily watched the clock wondering what they might be doing in school. Was it snack time? Was it roof time? Were they napping? When I would go pick her up or hear from my parents that all was well, all the anxiety and energy would drain from me and I would be left mostly useless for the rest of the day. It was hard. We didn’t know exactly what to do or what to say to Katya about why we were sending her to this place that was making her cry. I didn’t fully realize how difficult of a transition it was for Katya until her teacher commented on the fifth day she went to school, “today was the first time Katya ran around on the roof during play time, laughed and had a good time.” Oh, that was heart wrenching. But, after that things got better pretty fast. Now, instead of saying “Mama, I don’t want to go to school” every morning, Katya asks in the afternoons if she can go to school the next day. What a relief!

Peter and I are doing well, if a little tired. Peter has been preparing for a photo exhibit in Wels, Austria in a few weeks. Once that is over, he’ll attend another festival in Austria in December to take photos and then turn his attention to preparing for an exhibit in Oslo, Norway in January. I’ve been working on developing our training curriculum at OPTIONS and planning a whole string of grant-funded trainings around financial aid for college and working with immigrant students on the college process. Not a quiet moment most days.

Vanya is growing so fast, I thought I’d share a little about him.

April 30, 2009

Oh how time flies. Just a minute ago Vanya was tiny sweaty sticky baby searching for milk on everyone’s breast, arms and shoulders. Now he eats everything, talks and almost walks.

This week Vanya had chicken and rice, pasta and yogurt, slices of cheese and avocado. He routinely says “aaah dah,” (all done) when he is finished with his meal or even his “ga caca” (Graham Cracker). He tells us when he wants “duh!” (down) and is working on remembering “uh” (up). He knows “mama” and “papa” and has privately been practicing “baba,” (Katya’s name for her grandfather). “Katya” and “Mya Mya” (Katya’s name for her grandmother) cannot be far behind. Vanya shakes his head and says “ne ne ne” as he pulls the trash can over, plays with the electrical cords, and puts rocks in his mouth. He climbed two flights of stairs today with little assistance to get from his grandparents to his house for a nap. He pushes Katya around in a little red wagon and wrestles with her on the grass, the floor and mamapapa’s bed. He is always into something and requires constant care. Even Katya helps watch that he doesn’t eat anything he shouldn’t (dog food is his number 1 goal) or play with anything too small.

All this at ten months. What will he be up to when he is eleven months?!?

May 6, 2009

One week later and Vanya is saying “Kaka,” exactly what Katya called herself for the first two years of her life.

Today, I heard from a little bird that Vanya found one of Katya’s bubble blowing bottles, the non-spill kind in the little bottle with the bubble wand sticking out. He picked it up, pulled out the wand, and (I know what you are thinking, and he DIDN’T stick the wand in his mouth) he held it up to his mouth and went “whooo whooo.” He tried to blow bubbles!

I woke this morning at 5:40 am to do zazen (sitting zen) as I have been doing for the past couple of months. Recently, I have many times woken at 5:40 am only to find out that Vanya is also awake, making it somewhat impossible to sit zazen. So I have been trying different strategies to enable me to sneak down the stairs without waking anyone up. My very first effort was clever but a little too effective. I ordered a vibrating alarm wrist watch thinking it wouldn’t wake anyone else up. And it worked. No one woke up… including me. Then I tried closing the door to Katya and Vanya’s room when I got up to go downstairs. That ended yesterday in a storm of grunting and yelling. Vanya woke up and started grunting which woke up Katya who saw that the door was closed and started screaming “Why is the door closed? Why is the door closed?” So this morning, I woke up, sat up, turned off the alarm. I sat very quietly for some minutes hoping that everyone was sinking back into deep sleep. I stood up. I heard rustling from Vanya’s crib. I dropped silently to the floor in a split second decision to sit zazen right on the floor beside my bed so as not to make any noise at all. Silence. One minute. Rustle. Rustle. Two minutes. Ruuuustle. Silence. A small voice, “Aaa Dah. Ahhhhh Dahhhh.” Pause. “Mama.” Pause “Ahhhh Dahhh.”  No way to feel irritation. Just joy, amazement, bewilderment. Who is this small boy?

We have two big reasons to celebrate in our household:

Reason 1: KATYA IS POTTY-TRAINED!

Three weeks ago, we threw Katya a Potty Party. A Potty Party is an intense event. It involves teaching your child how to teach a doll how to use the potty, purchasing a doll that “pees,” explaining to your child why water is leaking out of the dolls armpits and hip joints, identifying a proper substance that looks like doll poop but doesn’t tempt you to eat it, and much much more. The purpose of a potty party is to make your child so excited about learning to use the potty that he/she will offer no resistance and be carried away on a wave of big kid peeing euphoria.

Our potty party turned out to be successful, but it didn’t live up to all that. A couple illustrations will suffice to demonstrate on what a lower level our potty party registered on the excitement scale (even though I tried my hardest to be the enthusiastic parent):

•After going with her doll to the bathroom to pee three or four times, Katya completely lost interest. I said “OH, EMMA (our doll’s name) NEEDS TO PEEEEE, KATYA.” You can imagine my voice twittering with excitement and anticipation. Katya said, “Oh?” “LET’S GO WITH HER TO THE BATHROOM” (at which point you are instructed to grab your child’s hand and rush off to the bathroom). I grabbed Katya’s hand attached to her totally sedentary body, and she looked up and said “No, mom, you go.” “You don’t want to go?” I say trying to sound unbelieving and still excited (instead of disappointed – not that she had also lost interest in this game but that she would not see and appreciate what a great poop I made out of prunes this time). “No, you go. I’m busy.”

•At the crucial point a little later, the point where Katya opened her gift of “big kid underpants,” and was supposed to jump for joy and beg to put them on, she looked calmly up at me and said “But where is my other present?” I was confused. “What other present?” She said “Another present. I don’t want this one.” PAUSE “Oh, but these are really exciting. They are your new big girl underpants, just like Emma’s. Let’s try them on.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” she wailed as she fled from me. For a moment it seemed as if this whole crazy farce was all for nothing. A deep breath. A reach down to center. I walked after her, clear that there was nothing else to do but quietly persist in my objective, which was to get her to put on some big girl underpants. As I put a pair of underpants on her, she wailed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOOooooooo, NO, noooooo, nooo….” But as soon as they were on, she stopped, jumped off the couch and said “Let’s play babies.” And that was all there was to it.

•That afternoon, after she had used the potty successfully three times (another part of the potty party is inventing ways to get your child to drink 12 gallons of liquid) and been greatly celebrated with stickers, treats, hugs and kisses, she had to go again. As she sat down on the potty, she looked up and said with a slightly bored tone “I want no stickers, no treats, no hugs and no kisses, Mama.” And she proceeded to pee in the potty, get up, wash her hands and leave the bathroom.

Reason 2: VANYA CAN CRAWL!

Yes, you read it right. Vanya can finally crawl. He is very pleased with himself. His relations are less pleased… those relations, that is, who like to keep their electrical cords in one piece, their garbage in their garbage cans, their laundry in their laundry bags, the cat food in the cat food dish, and their legs without bite marks.

Oh, yes, did I mention, he also learned to chew (bite) on people? And, did I mention, it HURTS!!? He has four sharp !#%!!# teeth.

Unfortunately, the only thing funnier (to Vanya) than tipping over the garbage can is the word “no!” My parents insist that he even knows how to say this word and that when they say “NO!” he laughs and turns around and says “no” right back.

He is communicating up a storm. The second sign he picked up (after “milk”) was “all done.” He uses it constantly – whether to tell you he is all done with the apples or all done with the meal in general. If you try to ignore it, he gets really upset, arches his back and screams. In addition to this, he has just learned that he can pull his bib off. Even when it seems to be hurting him, he pulls, pulls, pulls, scrunches up his face and throws his head back, and POP! off it comes.

His nickname is trouble (double double toil and).

If you are interested in seeing the two sweet munchkins in action, you can look at these two videos they made to wish their grandmother a happy birthday:
Katya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzKSLeVnFs
Vanya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCEuC4lEe0

Sometimes Peter and I like to call Katya “pumpkin head” as an endearment. “Hello my little pumpkin head!” “It’s time to go to BED, pumpkin HEAD.” I am not sure why we started or where it came from, but the other night we were unwise enough as to have a prolonged conversation about it:

“Are you a pumpkin head?”
“Nooooo”
“Who is my little pumpkin head?”
No answer.
“Who is my little pumpkin head? Who is?” [Tickle Tickle]
“HAA HAA HAA HEE HEE HA”
“Are you my little pumpkin head?” [Tickle tickle tickle]
“HAA HAAA HEEE” [gasp for breath] “HAA HEE HAA YES HAA HE HE”
“Is mama a pumpkin head?”
“No.”
“Who is mama then?”
“Mama is a pickle head.”
“:( … is papa a pumpkin head?”
“No. Papa is a sausig head.” [sausig = sausage]

It is somewhat berserk having two little children. There are whole hours where not even an instant of quiet breaks through the noise. Katya has taken to talking non-stop and asking “why?” about every 20 seconds or so (this is particularly true when you are engaged in some kind of hard physical or mental labor). Vanya, having passed through his screeching at the top of his lungs phase, had entered the eternal noise and babbling stage. He just puts out a constant string of sounds, which occasionally are very cute “da da da’s” and more often are less amusing (i.e. extremely irritating) moans and groans.

Katya’s nose runs often in the winter time. We are not sure if it is the wintertime snuffles or allergies. But she often asks for a tissue. Just now, as I was writing this, she asked for a tissue. I took the opportunity to use the toilet and get her a piece of toilet paper for a tissue. As I handed it to her she asked,
“It that you pee one?” “WHAT?” “Is that you pee one?” “NO.”

Katya has become very directive of late. She has always known quite clearly what she wanted, but now she is able to articulate it. And, she does, non-stop.
•Upstairs: “Mama, I want seltzer with ice in a sippy cup, please.”
•On the way up the stairs: “Carry me, mama. Turn on the light. When we get upstairs, I want to play play dough in my playroom for a couple minutes. You turn on my light.”
•On the way down the stairs: “I want toast with black berry jam and a bowl of yogurt with honey and Mama’s cereal.”
•At the breakfast table, sitting backwards in her chair observing my mother, who makes us all breakfast: “I want a waffle, Mya Mya. I want a waffle, Mya Mya. Mya Mya I want a waffle. I want a waffle with syrup and egg and toast, Mya Mya. I want some water. Mya Mya I want some water… NO, not in that cup, in a sippy cup. I want some juice, Mama, I want some berry juice in a regular cup… NO, that doesn’t match, that doesn’t MATCH…”

Matching is a big thing. We mistakenly bought her a multicolor set of plates, spoons, forks, bowls and cups. Now it is one of the essentials of each meal that Katya’s food is all served on the same color table ware – so if you choose a blue plate, you must also be able to find the blue cup, the blue bowl, the blue fork and the blue spoon.

She has also been building lots of skills. She can do 12 piece puzzles all by herself. She is learning to play concentration with bear cards. She loves to help wash vegetables, make jello, pour pasta into water to cook and do art projects. She paints, glues, and scatters sequins and colorful cotton balls all over the place. She still loves to build towers with blocks or legos, play with her little wood and plastic people and her “babies.” She loves to migrate various items throughout the house. For example, this morning she had to take a plastic cabbage, apple slice and piece of corn down to her grandparent’s apartment.

Vanya is doing well. He is pretty big now, being seven months old and almost 20 pounds. He has recently learned to do lots o things, which put me in mind of writing his chronology before I completely forget when things happened for him:

Contractions started: Jun 10, 3 pm
Bought coconut water at store for consumption during labor in the hospital: Jun 10, 4 pm
Labor started in earnest: Jun 11, 2 am
Called doula to come: Jun 11, 4:30 am
Doula arrived: Jun 11, 5:30 am
Labor progressed with unusual speed: Jun 11, 7 am
Started feeling urge to push: Jun 11, 7:15 am
Fled to the hospital: Jun 11, 7:30 am
Arrived at hospital: Jun 11, 8 am
Born: Jun 11, 8:18 am
Longingly remembered the coconut water we abandoned as we fled to the hospital: Jun 11, 9 am, 9:30 am, 10 am, 10:30 am, 11 am….
Came home: Jun 14, 1 pm
Started breast feeding: Jun 15, 7 am
Started solid foods: Oct 11
Rolled over: Sometime in October or November
First tooth: bottom front, Nov 15
Second tooth: other bottom front, Nov 29
Sat up without help: early Dec
Stopped breast feeding: mid-Dec
Started sleeping through the night: Dec 24
Moved into a room with his sister: Dec 27
Did his first sign: Jan 1 (sign for milk)
Started babbling: early-Jan (a da da da da, a ma ma ma, a pa pa pa )
Started pulling himself to stand on his knees in his crib: early Jan
Started clapping: early Jan
Held his own bottle: mid-Jan
Shouted with anger when he was barred from entering his sister’s play space in his walker: Last week
Started finger foods: today
Third tooth: any day now
Started crawling: sometime soon or he will bust a gut
Mom completed healed from ballistic birth: before this calendar year is over?

Vanya’s defining characteristic is his calm bright cheerfulness. He can sit for ages quietly engaged in playing or contemplating life but when someone looks at him or talks to him, he positively lights up.

It has begun to become clear that Vanya is developing strong will power and sense of determination where his interests are concerned. He is not easily dissuaded from completing the tasks which he sets for himself. Downstairs at my parent’s house, they have had to rearrange the kids’ play space because of Vanya’s escapades in his walker. At first, he wasn’t really good at maneuvering around in it. But he slowly got better and better. Then he began to conduct a series of drive by’s of Katya’s table, often abducting little plastic people standing too close to the edge– and the only thing louder than Katya’s shriek of dismay is Vanya’s howl of rage at being barred from the area.

Unlike his sister at his age, Vanya likes to try to eat books, or at least chew them, and he loves to grab them and feel them. He is crazy to crawl. He tries and tries and tries – and falls, falls, falls…. and tries again and again and again. He can move around a very wide area just kind of scooting and half-crawling. He can also pick up tiny things off the floor – so we have to sweep all the time. He loves music. As soon as someone starts singing or playing music, Vanya invariably starts bobbing up and down and smiling and sometimes clapping. He definitely claps if the song is “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

Two sweet sleeping babies lay upstairs. One tired gum-chewing tea-drinking mama sits downstairs in front of her computer zoning out.

Today was quite a day. Katya is getting her two-year molars. (She let me look in her mouth with a flash light!) She is crazily vacillating between playing cheerfully and whining intolerably. She even had about 30 minutes when she was just crying inconsolably. She asks for all kinds of snacks, but doesn’t eat them. She wants to sit up at the table for lunch and dinner but only to play with her food. She is contrary and has tried everyone’s patience by dripping cereal on the table and floor, mixing up Myamya’s embroidery threads, throwing toys on the floor, sticking leaves in her mouth, crying over everything, constantly demanding “new” water or juice or snack, and then sinking back into Myamya’s chair pale and tired saying “I don’t feel well, mama. Pick me up!.”

We took a walk to the park this morning. When we got there, she wanted to walk. So we helped her out of the stroller. She hadn’t gone five steps when her (new) pants started falling down. In the summer time when that happened, we just took off her pants. But today it was cold. So, we stood there racking our brains for something to use as a belt. I scavenged around through the diaper bad while Katya was standing there crying like she had lost her best friend. The only thing I could find was a plastic bag. So I tore it down the middle and wadded it up and bent down to loop it through the belt straps on Katya’s pants. She started shrieking “NO! I don’t want the bag. I don’t want the bag.” and crying hysterically. It took us more than 5 minutes and every ploy we could think of to get her to calm down and accept the bag as a belt for the time being. I think the winning ploy was that she could hold the bag of popcorn that we were taking to feed the ducks.

Needless to say, I am quite tired tonight.

Peter is in Austria. He has been there for 6 days and I miss him terribly - not just because of the relentlessness of being with two kids all day long. He is my relaxation. When he’s home, we relax in the evening together - whether we go see a concert (extraordinarily rare these days) or watch House, MD (very common) or just talk for a while and then go to bed early. He is my relaxation even when it stresses me out to be doing nothing instead of something. He will be home tomorrow.

Vanya is teething too. But his teething is regular “wah wah mrhhmmmm mrhhmmm mmmrahhrahh rah mrrr mrrr rahhhh” constantly all day long type of teething. You know, the Dab of Orajel, Drool Profusely, Fall Right Asleep kind of teething.

Otherwise, he is an extremely cheerful little guy. He loves to put stuff in his mouth: his toys, his hands, your hands, his clothes, his burp clothes, Katya’s toys, your toys, diapers, wipe-ees, papers, pencils, tubes of Desitin, plates, whatever he can get his pudgy little hands on. He also loves to keep rhythm. He has a little rocking chair and he knows just how to move his legs to keep it rocking for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. He can rock himself across the room. He is just learning the same thing with his new johnny jump up. He is beginning to bounce in rhythm, up and down, up and down, up and down, no higher, no lower, no higher, no lower, up and down, up and down. He is eating solids already. He eats cereal happily, squash less happily and pumpkin somewhere in the middle.

AND, he is learning to sleep through the night. He sleeps about 10 hours a night now, which is great! In fact, I am going from this e-mail to the shower and then to bed with the possibility of sleeping for seven hours straight. (I haven’t realized this possibility yet because Katya started to wake up at night just about the time that Vanya started sleeping through them, I think because of her teeth. But, even if I don’t realize it, going to bed with the potential for sleeping 7 hours straight is much better than going to bed without that potential).

Vanya is 2 1/2 months old. He is harder to write about than Katya. He is a sweet, good natured, patient baby. He doesn’t cry unless he is hungry or he wants to be burped - and even then he only cries if you ignore the vast number of squiggly grunting signs he gives that something is wrong. He hasn’t cried at night for at least 2 months now, which is just amazing.

Since he is so quiet, sometimes you almost forget he is there, sitting in his chair or laying in his bassinet. That doesn’t mean that occasionally he doesn’t demand a lot of attention. He does. There are days he seems to be hungry all the time or simply uncomfortable. And, he does like to be held and talked to. He completely lights up if someone bends down to pay attention to him. He smiles and laughs and coos.

He has developed a mesmerizing cooing repertoire. Accompanied, as it is, with laughing and smiling, he pulls you in so that it is almost impossible to turn away. He uses a great variety of sounds and tones, including some impossibly high ones. And he bats his eyes at you as if you were his whole dependence and delight.

For the last two nights he has been working at twisting me around his little finger by sleeping for 7 and 8 hours at a time. I am completely charmed. Although I have to relearn how to sleep for that many hours in a row. He sleeps soundly through. It is I who keeps waking up… to check on him, on how many hours he has been sleeping, on when I might need to pump, on whether I have to go to the bathroom, on how many hours might be left…

He is very healthy and growing right on schedule. At his 2-month visit, he was in the 50th percentile across the board for height, weight and head circumference. He now weighs more that 12 1/2 pounds. It still absolutely amazes me, as one of Vanya’s older cousins highlighted for me by continuously asking to see the milk, that though you never actually see the milk going from your breast into the baby, that the breast feeding thing really works.