Recently I’ve been getting into some pretty heavy theological discussions with Rosalind.  I am tempted to take this responsibility very seriously.  I want her to be aware of spiritual things; I want her to have an optimistic and hopeful view of the universe; I want to be careful not to “program” her into any particular creed or away of thinking (even if that way of thinking is the absence of a creed.)

But then I actually talk to her and I realize my concerns are totally moot.  After all, I can’t even explain to her why Monday is a preschool day, how I am going to prejudice her notion of God?  She’s going to construct her own strange reality based on bits of pieces of words I don’t even remember saying.  And in fact, that’s what is happenning.

The first talk I had with her, we were about to leave on a longish trip when some missionaries came to the door.  I shooed them away, but I could only get Rosy in the car by telling her I’d explain about the men while we were driving.  Here’s a summary of what I said, although I’m sure it was even less articulate at the time:

“Some people [I use "some people" all the time when talking about religion, but Rosy doesn't notice at all] wonder why there are people, and animals, and the sky, and the water.  Why are these things here?  And some people think, someone must have made them.  And that was God.  And God is in everything, in the sky, in your hand, in the trees and plants and animals.  And some people have some stories about God, and those men wanted to tell me about their stories, but I said ‘No thank you’ because I don’t think their stories are true.  People have all different stories and sometimes they get in a big fight: ‘God had a son named Jesus!’  ‘NO!  God had a prophet named Mohammed!’  ‘NO!  God had a son named Jesus!’ And then they get really mad and try to hurt each other.”

All right, maybe I didn’t need to introduce the concept of religious wars just yet.  But it seemed to capture her imagination, and the whole way to the farm she continued to ask, “Tell me that story again about the guys who get mad.”  But when Nathan got home at night and I asked her to tell him what she learned about God, this is how she distilled it: “Dod is in my fingers!  And the sky!  But we tan’t see Dod.”

That all seemed like a reasonable place to end.  But the ideas are still percolating around in her head.  The other day, several weeks after our initial discussion, I was giving her her nightly bedtime massage and she asked for Dod.

“What?”

“I want Dod.”  She gestured with her hand.

“Uh..  You mean Gollum?”  This is what she was gesturing towards:

I gave it to her, shaking my head.

“This is Dod.  Dod is my friend.  He makes it rain, and also not rain.”

Ready...

Set...

Go...

Vote!

Rosalind and I took great pleasure in walking down to our polling place and voting last Tuesday. I *love* that the first major political event in her lifetime is Barack Obama winning the presidency. For me, it’s Nixon getting impeached, and I believe the debacle influenced the political discourse of my childhood and adolescence–heck, and adulthood too–towards cynicism and laziness. I’m not the only dreamer in this country who hopes that for the next 30 years we’ll all feel more hope for our government, and in return we’ll give it the sacrifice and sincerity it deserves.

Rosalind has been saying “Mama” in some form for, I don’t know, since she was born.  Or, OK, maybe we first started wondering if it was a word around 9 or 10 months.  Anyway, my point is, it has been her only word for a looooong time.  A few weeks ago she started experimenting with other verbalizations, starting with random song lyrics and progressing to animal sounds like “moooooo” and “peep peep” (that went along with her bird sign.) But now she is officially talking! And her first real word after “mama” is the same as her first sign after “milk”: “All done!” (Or, “aaaaaaaw-dah!”) I guess she’s a girl who knows her limits.

And now that she has one clear word I am hearing other things that’s she may have been saying for a while, like “up” and “ap” (for apple) and “op” (for help.) She is also doing a fine “da-da-da” along with the sign for daddy. And of course, “hieeeeeeee” and “byeeeeeee” with waving.

Here is some sample dialog from her bath tonight. She started randomly saying hi to me:

and here is her all-done.

I am finally getting caught up with our pictures–at least, all the pictures through mid-September.  *sigh*  Anyway all the festivites associated with Rosalind’s first birthday are finally online.  Here’s one from the big day itself:

The worst toy in the world and a joyful little girl

And here is from her big weekend party:

Bring on the sugar high

Here is a *long* (two minute) video that fully captures the Happy Birthday song, and the fate of that cupcake.

From the moment she emerged from the birth canal, Rosalind has been one robust baby.  Sure, she’s gotten a sniffle here and there, a bruise or two, but the rule has been sturdy, happy, and healthy.  That is, until the last few weeks.  First there was a bad cold, complete with lots of green snot; that turned into an ugly cough.  While that was going on, a mysterious foot or leg injury appeared that had us at Children’s Hospital late on Friday night for x-rays.  She wouldn’t stand or walk and wailed whenever she tried to put weight on her right leg.  However, x-rays were apparently negative–the doctor thought he saw a fracture but we think he was overruled by the radiologist.  He was a bit of a joker.  Anyway her leg seemed fine 24 hours later.  But no sooner had the trauma from that incident faded from my mind than Rosalind developed a random throwing-up problem.  Five vomits in six days, all of them while she was sleeping or immediately after waking up.  She wasn’t too bad off during the day, but her appetite was small

All this pain and suffering, I have to admit, it gets to me!  The worst was her leg.  Walking and running are such a huge part of who she is right now; seeing her hobbled was agonizing.  This is yet another aspect of being a parent that I observed without understanding for my whole life until now.  “Come on, what’s the big deal?” I asked myself when I saw people going crazy over a skinned knee, or even a broken leg.  “It will heal, there’s no long term harm.”  Sure, you can look at things that way when you break your own leg, if you are exceptionally patient and mature.  (Ask me how I dealt with it when I badly sprained my ankle.)  But when it’s your child–all I can see is her immediate affliction, and my inability to help.

Compared to that feeling, the stink of clothes and hair soaked in baby vomit is barely even worse noticing.

Rosalind had her 1 year old doctor’s appointment yesterday (she’s actually 13 months–I was late getting the appointment.)  She is 23 pounds and 32 inches tall, 68th and 97th percentile respectively for her age group.  Her head circumference was something reasonable in the 80th percentile or so, I don’t remember exactly.

Her new milestone: walking backwards.  She was hanging out last night in parachute pants and no shirt and, well, I think she just felt compelled to try to moonwalk.

Nathan and I have been trying to teach Rosalind baby sign language since she was about five months old. At first we were pretty desultory about it, remembering only some of the time, but still it didn’t take her long until she understood things like “milk” and “more”. Around seven months, she started making some hand motions that could be interpreted as “milk”, but usually only when she was already nursing. Then at ten months, she had a breakthrough with “milk”: she figured out how to sign it deliberately, often right in my face, to get what she wanted. Pretty exciting! From there the signs picked up pretty rapidly, and now I count at least 21 that she does and many more that she understands. She is just starting to put them together in sentence fragments.

These days, here in Seattle, every mother I know tries to teach her babies at least a few rudimentary signs. It’s part of the culture. But every so often I run into someone who still criticizes the practice. And I look at these people like they are crazy. I ask you, what could be more satisfying than helping your daughter learn to communicate? It is great on so many levels, and understanding her meaning is only a part of it. There’s also watching her get visibly smarter, as she starts putting words together and using them in unique ways. And best of all perhaps is seeing her own pride and joy at mastering something. In addition to her word-signs, she does a lot of signing along to songs, like “Twinkle twinkle”, “Wheels on the bus”, etc. There’s nothing useful about that, but she loves it just the same.

There is one downside to the signing. Once she knew she can be clear about what she wants, she got even more ornery about not getting it!

Rosalind’s signs

Rosalind and I joined a CSA for the summer at Jubilee Farm. Every Tuesday we drive down there and pick up a load of produce, harvesting a portion of it. It has been a super fun thing to do, for both of us, and very satisfying! The first few weeks, Rosalind wasn’t mobile at all. Then she started crawling around in the dirt. The farm is where she learned to stand, and now she runs all over the place, splashing around in puddles, picking berries or green beans and eating them, getting extremely dirty and loving her day of being a country girl.

I think the farm experience today must have inspired the stroke of genius she had tonight. She has an exersaucer with a button that plays a bunch of short songs in random order. One of them is Old MacDonald. Tonight, when it started playing, right on cue she sang “ee-eye-ee-eye-oh”. Ok, it was really more like oh-ee-oh-yee, but definitely intentional. Nathan and I were blown over. I don’t know how she remembered since it’s not even a song we sing to her often. It’s her first “word” other than mama! She continued to sing the chorus on demand all evening whenever we started the song.

We took a video; I will post it here when I get it downloaded. In the meantime here’s an old farm picture.