I love water and swimming, and so do both of the kids.  Here is some water frolicking:

I’m glad they are so comfortable in the water, but I really want them to learn to swim independently as quickly as possible.  A couple of months ago, Rosy had a somewhat-near drowning incident that rattled me badly.  We were at our farm, and for “farm school” that day we took the tractor down to the Snoqualmie River to wade in the water.  I had Alden and Rosy and I was also watching my friend’s son, pictured below.

Rosy and Nolan ran along the shore for a while, then he got tired of that and played in the sand.  I couldn’t help myself, I had to strip Alden down and let him play in the murky water too.

I was still keeping a close eye on Rosalind, but she was only wading shin deep so I didn’t have my hyper-aware mama senses turned up, as you can see in this picture.

Still, in a little while I noticed she was getting a little farther away than I was comfortable with, maybe 5 yards distant.  I opened my mouth to call her back, and all of a sudden–she disappeared.  It was terrifying,  but still at first I assumed she’d just tripped.  Clutching my wet slippery baby to me with one arm, I bounded towards her.  I saw her head break the surface as her arms flailed.  I reached her, I grabbed her, and I realized I was in the water up to my chest.  There was a big hole.  In fact, if you look at the pictures of the river carefully, you can see it–the water changes color from brown to dark green, near the log detritus.

When I floundered out of the water back to the beach, a now-wailing baby in one arm and a screaming girl in the other, I saw none of the other many adults on the beach had noticed a thing.

Rosy was completely fine, she hadn’t swallowed any water and although she was hysterical at first, I was able to reassure her immediately that she did the right thing, she swam a little bit and then I came to save her.  I believe I’ve seen that she’s a bit more cautious around water now, but she still has fun in it.  But I am still shaken, two months later.  It would have been so easy not to see her, for the ordinary day to turn into something I can’t even think about.

Life is unpredictable and I can’t really protect my children, or myself, from the randomness of it.  But if I can teach them to swim at a young age, at least that’s something.

Alden sat up so early, I was sure he was going to start crawling when he was six months old.  But he sassed me–his first tentative forward momentum came on October 4, the day he turned *seven* months.  Here’s what he could do on October 8, sufficiently motivated:

He’s a true digital native.

I abandoned my blog a good long time ago, but here’s an attempt to revitalize it!  So far I have: remembered my passwords, upgraded the software, and got rid of my spam comment problem.  Do I have anything interesting to communicate?  Only time will tell.

My plan, though, is to have weekly posts on various topics.  Here’s what I’m thinking to start:

Monday: Family Day.
What we’ve been up to, news about our lives.

Wednesday: Grandparent Day.
Photos or video or stories about the kids.  Probably totally boring to everyone else.

Friday: Recipe Day.
Something I’ve made in the last week, and it can’t be a recipe I’m copying from somewhere else, either.

Sunday: Outside World Day (optional.)
If I have anything interesting to say that’s NOT about the kids or what I’m cooking for them, here’s where it will go.  Chances are slim.

This is another post that never got published, that I’m just finding 14 months later.

* * *

I had a hot latte waiting for me when I woke up on Mother’s Day this year.  Nathan had gotten up with Rosalind an hour earlier, and they walked out to the little coffee stand together.  It was a lovely start to the day, but it got much better.

We drove out to Wallace Falls, a hike about 1.5 hours from our house on Route 2.  We found the hike in our current favorite book, Best Hikes With Kids: Western Washington. We both thought it sounded familiar, but we didn’t recognize anything when we arrived. Contrary to our expectation (and hope), Rosalind fell asleep in the car on the way over, sleeping the last half hour. There went her nap for the day and, we thought, any hope of making a lot of progress on foot. We didn’t think she’d accept being in the backpack for too long if she wasn’t asleep.

But Rosalind blew away all our expections on this hike. Not only did we complete the entire route, 5 1/2 miles and 1200 feet of elevation, but she must have walked at least a mile and a half of it or more. She made tracks! And she enjoyed nearly every second. What a great hike this is for kids. We were never far from water, or from the rocks necessary for throwing into it. The trail itself was a little rough for a toddler, and there were certainly places where I guarded Rosalind when she walked to keep her from tumbling down a steep bank. But there was so much to keep her interest. She was astonished to see the grand middle falls. At first all she could say was “Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh!” When she gathered her senses to explain: “Waters fall down!” (Very true, of a waterfall.) “Waters fall down! Splash! Waters hurt? Waters tying! (crying)” We reassured her that the waters were “O-tay!” and she repeated that to herself a number of times, to ease her mind.

When we finally got to the top, after several wonderful hours, Nathan and I got a surprise. There was a sign up there regarding some missing hikers from some years back. And with that sign, it clicked–we *had* done the hike before. But although today I was in a state of happy awe at its loveliness, the *only* thing I remembered from the previous time was mocking the old newspaper article. (In my defense, it is hard to imagine how those women were so helpless.) I’m quite sure that the last time we were on the trail we did the whole thing in a couple hours, probably thinking black thoughts at the slow families crowding the trail, and at the end I probably just wished we’d driven further out to something a little more off the beaten track. What a difference, now that I’m sharing Rosalind’s perspective, and her joy.

Enthralled by the waterfall

I just noticed this blog post in my “drafts” folder, 16 months later (7/26/2010.)  It’s not much of a post–I probably meant to include some video or something–but it’s part of the record so I’m putting it out there now.

* * *

I haven’t blogged in a few months, and now I have a completely different child.  I guess that’s how it goes.  At Christmas, she was saying some words, and she knew the names of the most important people in her life, and she would do signs that went along with a song.  Today she knows nouns and verbs and adjectives that she can put together in sentences, she can learn a name or any other word the first time hearing it, and she can actually sing recognizable songs herself.  Yesterday we went to the zoo and saw a bunch of animals, some of which frightened her.  This morning she told me me the whole story, about “zoo” and the “pea-tot” that we saw when we first got there, and the “ephant” (she was “scare”), and the monkeys and the lion that also scared her, and the bears.  She said “mama scare?” and when I said no, I wasn’t scared, she asked about her part-time nanny and her friend Nolan.  It’s not just that she has learned a lot of words.  She uses them to describe her experience, and even to express her thoughts.  It’s been such a ridiculously fast trajectory to this point, I am blown away.

Rosalind is 16 months old now, and last week she has started sleeping through the night. I thought I would be enveloped in a rosy haze of well-rested joy by now. But instead I’m just baffled and frankly, still kind of tired. Here is some (a lot of) history.

Ah, sleep. It’s an eternal topic of conversation among parents or infants and toddlers, even preschoolers. Is he sleeping through the night? How many naps does she take? What is your bed-time routine like? Etc. For the first eight months of Rosalind’s life I was completely bored by all variations on this topic. We practiced 100% cosleeping, and although Rosalind would breastfeed who-knows-how-many times a night I mostly slept through it. I never felt fatigued, and when bleary-eyed new mothers complained to me I just smiled pityingly and thought, “She should really just take the baby to bed.”

And then suddenly I was done with cosleeping. Part of it was Rosalind becoming mobile–I couldn’t safely leave her alone in bed any more. Part of it was how much Nathan and I missed our time together at night. Sneaking quietly into bed under cover of darkness, no conversation allowed, was getting old. In any case, it was time for Rosalind to go into her crib. And ever since then, getting enough sleep has been somewhat of a battle.

At first I still nursed her to sleep and then shifted her into her crib. She’d sleep there until Nathan and I were in bed, and then I’d bring her in with us the first time she woke up. At first She was up at least every hour until she got into bed with us, always wanted to breastfeed in the rocking chair, so we never got any peaceful evenings. A big change was when Nathan started putting her to bed, and comforting her when she woke up before we were in bed. It was a very traumatic adjustment at first, but it didn’t take long until she accepted and even liked the new routine. She was getting really kicky and disturbing in our bed. I started creating artificial times before which I wouldn’t take her to bed. We had some more trauma when she realized I wouldn’t nurse her every time I went in, although I still rocked her back to sleep for a while. Eventually I could just put my hand on her inside the crib, but I still always had to stay there until she was sound asleep. Meanwhile I kept making the time when she could come into our bed get later and later. These changes happened so slowly, over the course of months, that it often seemed to me we were making no progress at all, and I had to constantly remind myself that indeed, things used to be worse. All I knew was, my tolerance for being out of bed was increasing faster than her sleep independence!

(Naps, meanwhile, are a whole different issue. I have always been almost irrationally opposed to a schedule that would tie me town to the house, and I did manage to avoid it for over a year. Rosy would sleep when she got tired, in the moby or sling or ergo, or the car, or the stroller, wherever we happened to be. But finally I had to accept that she needs a dedicated time to nap, and if not a consistent place, at least a consistent opportunity. Still, I haven’t gotten her into a routine that involves her crib–she has hardly ever napped there. Almost every day, I take her out in the stroller around the block a couple of times, and then bring it in to her nursery. She sleeps in it anywhere from half an hour, to two and a half, it’s completely unpredictable.)

You can see my disdain for the sleep conversation has been reduced, and now I am just as tedious as every other mother. The truth is, I even bore myself when I talk about all these details. Still, I can’t always help it, and since this is (I hope!) the one and only blog post that will be dedicated to the issue, I won’t spare you.

As of last week, the state of things wasn’t too horrible, but far from perfect. Nathan was putting Rosalind to bed every night at 8, and it was taking between 15 and 45 minutes to get her down. She was waking up 3-5 times a night, generally requiring only 5-10 minutes of shushing and patting to put her to sleep. I was bringing her into bed between 5 and 6 for some breastfeeding and a couple more hours of sleep, and we’d get up for the day between 8 and 9. And then, on Thursday night, something random clicked in Rosalind’s brain. Nathan put her down as usual at 8:30. The next time I heard from her was at 6 am, her normal time to breastfeed. Now, *I* was up before then, multipe times, listening at her door to make sure she was still breathing! But she was just doing her thing. The next night, same thing. And then next. Last night she did wake up a little earlier, at 4, but it was due to nasty congestion. It seems, for the time being at least, that she has learned to sleep in long stretches. Whether she’s not waking up at all, or waking up but drifting back off on her own, I am astonished.

And here’s the black lining on the silver cloud. It seems she doesn’t need as much sleep as I thought. Instead of going to sleep at 8 and waking up at 8, she has been staying awake until nearly 10 and getting up at 7:30. So now Nathan and I are staying up later than we should, to have a little time together at night, and also I’m getting up earlier than I used to.

Argh!

When I imagined having a daughter, before I did have one, I pictured a wild spirit. I thought this girl would be fearless, climbing on everything, not too interested in other people. I thought she’d have a knack with blocks and legos, she’d be fascinated by fantastical stories, and she’d be always original in thought, word, and deed. In other words, I imagined her as an idealized version of myself–the way I wished I was when I was actually growing up.

Rosalind is not that girl. She is not fearless, although not timid either; she thinks about things before she does them, even at this young age. Block toys are of moderate interest to her, but she shows no signs of being an architect later in life. Instead, her focus is on other people. Some of her first words were the names of her little friends, and she talks about (and wants to talk to) distant members of her family all the time. (I can’t tell you how many times a day she points to the laptop or the phone and starts repeating, “Nanna? Nanna? Peez?”) She is also constantly surprising me at how nurturing she is, almost maternal. I got her a plastic baby doll a few months ago when I saw how she was developing, and she *loves* that doll. She feeds her with a spoon, she dances with her, she washes her hair in the bath tub. Here she is giving her a ride on her horse Rody:

Rosalind and Baby go for a ride

Plastic dolls are all well and good–at least it’s a realistic baby instead of a Barbie, lord knows–but in typical hippy/pioneer spirit, I would much rather Rosalind be playing with a soft, natural, hand-made doll that she can keep her whole life. So I decided to make her one for Christmas. Not being very fluent in sewing patterns, I ordered a kit for beginners for a Waldorf Doll with pale skin, blue eyes, and red hair. It took more hours than I really want to think about, but it was pleasant work; usually I made progress while I watched the Colbert Report or Columbo with Nathan. Here is now it turned out:

Doll in her Christmas outfit

The doll, au naturel

Does Rosalind like the doll? Well–somewhat. She is no Baby in Rosalind’s affections. But I like to think that she’s gaining some fondness for her. It’s a little hard for me to watch her spill stuff on the doll, or try to pull the hair out that I so painstakingly sewed in–but I grit my teeth and smile, because my best hope is that someday she’s a dirty, raggedy, loved object.

Santa and a blobby baby, 2007

Scary Claus, 2008

2008 was Rosalind’s second Christmas of course, but the first in which she was an active participant. She loved the Christmas lights, the decorations, and the tree (so much that we had to build a fence around it.) She didn’t expect the presents on Christmas morning, but she had a great time opening them. She doesn’t understand about Santa Claus being kind and generous and magical, but she says “Ho ho ho” whenever she seems him (so long as he doesn’t get too close.)

We were in Colorado for Christmas itself, with Nathan’s family. Just like last time we were there, everybody was a little out of sorts: Nathan was recovering for a nasty flu/pneumonia thing, I got food poisoning the day after Christmas (thankfully a very mild case.) And Rosalind was up nearly all night on Christmas Eve, and spent much of Christmas day with an unexplained fever that sapped all her energy.

Listless baby

Still, she’s a trooper, and she chirked up when she had a nap and got a little baby tylenol in her. Here she is later in the afternoon in her Christmas togs:

Smiley Christmas baby

Also just like our last visit, whether Rosalind was feeling well or sick she *loved* her cousins. She was very affectionate and gentle to baby Emma, and she’d sneak up and give Connor the occasional hug too. But Jacob was the center of her universe.

Rosalind and Jacob

I feel so lucky that Rosalind’s first two Christmases were each with one complete side of her family. In 2007, we were with my brother and his family in Virginia, with both my parents around for at least part of holiday too (and even my grandmother.) This year, Colorado with both Nathan’s sisters and his parents. Thus we’ve all gotten to experience two whole sets of traditions, both wonderful in their own way. In the coming years, as our family matures and we start staying home for the holidays at least some of the time, we’ll get to pick and choose among them for our own style. I can’t wait.

The Solley Side (2007)

The Kriege Side (2008)

Rosalind is learning to talk really fast.  She says more words now than I can remember, and signs even more than that.  And then there is a whole collection of “sounds”–like “mooo” for cow, “doot-doot” for bird, “rmmm rmmm” for car, etc.  She is starting to put them in combinations, too: yesterday, for example, she told me “shh” (finger on lips, “baybeee” (signing baby) is sleeping (signing sleep.)  She is also very proficient at the “mooo-uh moo-uh moo-uh” (signing more) “eez” (signing please) combination.  I feel like I am constantly in a conversation with her now, although it’s in a crazy language that only I can understand.  She can really let me know what she’s thinking about, even abstract thoughts and memories.  It is so great.

One thing I’m particularly struck by in her language development is how social it reveals her to be.  Two of her earliest words are the names of her best friends: “no-no-no” (Nolan) and “Azhzhus” (Azure.)  She started saying “Nolan” because we were often looking at a picture of him in the beautiful scrap book Jane made.  Several days in a row she said “no-no-no” on the same page, but we could hardly believe she was refering to her friend.  The first time I heard her say Azure was even more impressive.  It was the day after I started to believe in “Nolan”.  We drove over to Michele and Azure’s house, and as I parked the car in front Rosalind looked out the window and started repeating “Azhzhus.  Azhzhus.  Azhzhzus.”

Now there’s not a day goes by that she doesn’t bring up these two, and always in combination with each other–even though it’s only rarely she sees them together.  Yesterday we were in the grocery store and there was a very blond boy about the same size as Nolan.  “No-no-no?  No-no-no?” she asked questioningly.  And then “Azhzhus.”  Not really to me, just to herself.  She was just remembering her friends.

Nolan and Azure with Elizabeth

Thanksgiving Feast

Carnivorous Girl

I sure do love Thanksgiving.  It was my least favorite holiday growing up, but that was before I got to do the cooking!  The traditional meal still isn’t my all-time favorite for flavor, but the pleasures of serving up a feast make up for the moderation in my enjoyment of the actual food.  Besides, stuffing and cranberry sauce might not thrill me, but who isn’t ecstatic about pie?

I went almost completely local for my dishes this year.  The turkey was a pastured heritage bird from a local meat farm, and boy was it flavorful (although I might have slightly overcooked it.)  The dark meat was phenomenal.  The squash in the soup appetizer, the potatoes, the vegetables in the stuffing, the kale, the apples and pumpkin in the pies, were all either from my CSA or the farmer’s market.  The cranberries were from Wisconsin–what can you do.  It was really satisfying to know where everything came from as we sat down to eat it; it made the holiday even more meaningful for me.

But let’s be honest.  The food and all the celebration were only icing on my thanksgiving cake.  There’s no day goes by that I don’t realize, again, how lucky I am–that I don’t feel thankful for the comfort, joy, and richness of my life.  I never did anything to deserve it; there’s nothing I can do now to earn it; but I will revel in it, and be grateful for it.