radish times

June 14, 2007: Katya took her very first steps all by herself. (WOW!!)

I was intending to be cavalier about it. I had convinced myself that since she will take so many steps in her life that it was really not so important to see the first ones. But, boy, when she did it, so unexpectedly, I was astounded at the surge of joy we both felt. She was ecstatic, maybe even more excited than I was.

I was sitting on the floor intending to help her practice standing up on her own. I spread out my legs, set her in the middle, counted to three and let go. Instead of just standing there, she took four steps and landed in my arms laughing and squealing. Then we tried it again, and again and again. Each time I would set her facing me and she would walk toward me. What a rush!

June 21, 2007: Katya learned to eat using the dipping technique.

None of the mommy books prepared me for the fact that babies learn the dipping technique so early. (You know, the technique you use at cocktail parties to dip your broccoli and carrots in sour cream dip.) In fact, none of them mention it at all. I was feeding Katya lunch and having a little snack myself. She had toast, cauliflower, carrots, pasta and a bowl of yogurt. I just had a cracker with cheese. I was bored with my cheese, so I dipped my cracker in Katya’s yogurt … looked away … and when I looked back, Katya was dipping her toast in the yogurt. Then she dipped her cauliflower and put it in her mouth. Then she dipped her carrots, pasta, other toast, fingers, cauliflower, everything, yogurt, yogurt, yogurtpastacarrotmash.

Nor did she forget about it at dinner. There we were, dipping again. Her dipping skills are pretty good. Sometimes she loses the sense of it all and starts total emersion, but generally she sticks with dipping. You can tell the difference between dipping and emersion by the amount of dipping substance on her hands. If just her fingers are covered, she is practicing dipping. If more of her hand is covered, she has probably been toying with emersion. If dipping substance can be found on her elbow or in her armpit, she has been involved in total emersion.

June 23, 2007: Katya danced at the Vision Festival.

The Vision Festival is an annual festival of free jazz and other kinds of free music here in New York. As some of you may remember, Peter and I used to plunge into the festival for the whole week, listening to music, cooking, serving, shopping, and taking thousands of photos. In the past two years, we have done less cooking, serving and shopping because these things are a little harder to do with a baby. Instead, we took the baby to the festival and she loved it! Even though she was only there for two out of about 30 sets, it felt like it took more energy than all the cooking shopping listening serving of the past years during all 30 sets. Partly this is because when at a concert, it is important to encourage Katya to keep quiet. At 14 months, for Katya, this means walking and walking and walking and walking. And if she is tired and has skipped a nap (which she had) it means walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking. I hope you are forming the right mental picture. She is not confident enough yet to do all this walking on her own without a parental finger. So for me, it meant stooping and stooping and stooping and stooping and stooping.

The one piece of respite for me and my back was during the second set (which Katya really liked) when Katya stood on the balcony watching the musicians holding the wall and dancing (wiggling and jiggling and popping up and down). It was exuberantly adorable.

June 25, 2007: Katya is mastering the spoon self-feeding method.

And finally, Katya is getting really good at feeding herself with a spoon. This has to do in part with an executive parental decision about the foolishness of the popular baby safety spoons which we had been using. These spoons are slick and clever. They are made of some kind of rubbery plastic which changes color when they come in contact with hot food. The color change is intended to warn parents when the food is too hot. Its main flaw is the fact that the portion of the spoon that changes color when in contact with hot food is almost always covered by the food in question. So unless you are serving your baby clear broth, it is not excessively useful. It also has another flaw, one which makes it hard to teach a baby to use it on her own: there is not much area in the valley of the spoon. Therefore, food is much more likely to fall off the spoon before the baby can get the spoon to her mouth. So we have switched to good old fashioned grandma/grandpa/papa/mama hand-me-down metal baby spoons. These work ever so much better and Katya is getting along extremely well with them. She can use them to eat cereal and yogurt and she doesn’t get so frustrated with it all.

Aside: Safety baby forks are also less than useful because their tongs are dull and therefore baby can under no circumstances pierce food with them.

For the past three hours, I have heard nothing but *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack.* There is nothing wrong with our pipes. There are no cables hitting our building. None of our neighbors is having a fight. It is the sound of little lips smacking together to tell me that Katya is hungry.

Katya got up at 7 am. *smack, smack, smack* Time for a bottle of milk. She finished the milk. *smack, smack, smack* Time for breakfast. *smack, smack, smack* She had a bowl of cheerios with milk. Yum. *smack, smack, smack* She points. Mixed baby cereal with yogurt. Yum. She tries to use the spoon all by herself. *smack, smack, smack* Eggs and toast are not ready yet. Ah, we’ll cut the melon. *smack, smack, smack* Mmmmm. Good melon. Oh, toast, TOAST, TOOAAASSST. *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* What, eggs? EGGS? Where are my eggs? MY EGGS? *smack, smack, smack* *smack, smack, smack* Eggs on the floor. Yuck! apples, Apples, APPLES *smack, smack, smack* Mmmm. Good apple. Apple on the floor. Melon on the floor. Spoon on the floor. All done? Yes, yes. All done. Out of the high chair. Ohhhh!! Ohhh!! Point. Point. Point. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Time for a sushka (a hard small bagel-looking bread food). Sushka. Sushka. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Sushka on the floor. Plays a little while. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* What do you want now? *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* WHAT DO YOU WANT? Oh! Time for juice. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* Drinks her juice. Plays a little while. *smack, smack, smack**smack, smack, smack* WHAT DO YOU WANT… WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT NOW…??!?!?!?!? *smack, smack, smack*

In additions to *smack, smack, smack* Katya is developing quite a vocabulary. She has decided on an alliterative word acquisition style and she has chosen B as her first letter. Therefore, she can say:

Buah (book)
Ba (ball)
Baa (Balloon)
Brella (umbrella)
Bahbah (baby)
Beow (the B cat word, closely related to meow)
Bir (bird, and she can do the sign for this too)
Baa (what sheep say)
Bu-un (button)
Boo

Out of context, her pronunciation of most of these words closely resembles “BA.”

She can also say “Mama” (and variations like mamamama, mamama, and mamamamama), “Papa,”
“Ampapa” (grandpa), “Bahma” (grandma), and “Emah” (Emma). She has at least once been able to say “apple,” “sticky hands” and “boo well.” And she can sign for Milk, Eat, More, Bird, Airplane and Helicopter. It is actually possible to argue with her about whether you have just heard an airplane or a helicopter.

When resting from practicing her words (or often while practicing her words), Katya is trying like to devil to walk. She is highly proficient at skirting walls and furniture and her favorite thing is to hold someone’s fingers while walking around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around . . . and around the house. She tries to balance on her own and has done it for a count of five or so. She gets absolutely giddy after each attempt. Against the adamant advice of several loved ones, I am strongly rooting for Katya to walk on her own. My back is, and even my fingers are, extremely tired.

Katya spends much time with her grandparents. They take care of her two days a week and are often found taking her for a walk or playing in the backyard with her on their off-days. She loves it and often demands to visit them by pointing at our front door and screeching “ahhhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh.” As you may expect, her grandparents have had quite an influence on her. I came home from work several weeks ago only to be informed that if I want my baby to drink milk I will have to do “spa baby.” “Spa baby” is the practice of giving Katya her preferred drink (usually milk, but sometimes kefir, yogurt or juice) while she is lying down, preferably wrapped in a fluffy white towel on a soft green lawn chair. Somehow, quite mysteriously, Katya has developed the preference for ice water in her sippy cup and she likes to choose her own cookie. Not the kind of cookie. The exact cookie. Otherwise, she says, it is not so tasty. She likes to play the backs of chairs like a harp and knows that rubber bands can make very interesting sounds. She is excited about going to jail (sitting backwards in a chair looking out at her grandpa) and she relies on her four o’clock walk with the dog as a time to think over the events of the day and relax.

Katya had quite a nice first birthday last month. At her 1-year doctor’s visit everything was good. She weighed 19.4 pounds. She was 27 inches long. And her head is still very large.

On other fronts…

– I am in a week of relaxation and depressurization. I just got a new job which I will start next week. My old job ended two days ago. (This may be the reason that it is possible for me to write this update, the first in two months!) Starting the end of next week, I will be Coordinator of Training and Technical Assistance at the OPTIONS Center for Educational and Career Choice. Some of you may remember that I worked there years ago when I just graduated from college. In this job I will be training organizations and counselors throughout New York City to help kids get into and stay in college.

– Peter will have a photo exhibit at the Vision Festival here in New York City in about a week. His exhibition includes two series: 1) dancers and musicians 2) musicians and cities.

— In April we had a new addition to our family. Trevor Miyoko Lorimer was born to my cousin Tony and his wife Abby in California. She is an absolute adorable beauty.

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This update was brought to you by the letter B and the number 1.