just add water

here you have it, folks…

the growth of a little bean:

on second thought, i guess you add very little water.  supply lots of milk & food.  need ample amounts of patience.  plus another heaping tablespoon.  a few scoops of humor, and a bucket full of love.

more about books

while we’re on the subject of books, i would like to make my own review.

as The Mr. mentioned a long time ago, i have a great collection of books.  being a first grade teacher will do that.  but i also love love love children’s books.  i love to read period.  but it was always so much fun to collect these children’s books.  i spent a lot of my salary on them thru’ scholastic.  (god, i miss scholastic!)  maybe it’s because i remember when the flimsy newspaper-magazine would get passed out in class when i was younger, and always circling a zillion titles…  never ordering any.  well, there was the one time i got to get Mad Libs!!   FUNFUN.

i digress….

i haven’t been very knowlegeable about babies’ books, though.  many of my students/ teachers would mention titles i hadn’t heard of.  baby classics like:  Goodnight, Moon, Corduroy, &  Guess How Much I Love You.

i did read corduroy while teaching b/c it was one of the books we read as a school.  the other 2 jovie had gotten as gifts.  the first time i read them was to her.

i have my own review of the latter.

if you hadn’t read it, it’s about a baby bunny & father bunny.   the author Sam McBratney thought that would be too simplistic for a baby.  so he calls them “little nutbrown hare” & “big nutbrown hare” each.and.every.time.   

not only is it a mouthful to say, but really?  “nutbrown”???  is that in the crayola 64 box?

well, it’s time for baby to go to bed.  so daddy begins to do so, and the baby says:  “guess how much i love you.”  the whole book then becomes this sad sad competition of who loves whom more!

you gotta hand it to the baby for coming up with ways to show dad how much he loves him.  of course he begins with his outstreched arms, as we’re all wont to do as littlies.  but nonono.  that’s just not enough for dad.  he then has to tell the baby that he loves him MORE…. simply b/c his arms are longer.

so baby tries to come up with ways to show daddy he’s loved, and each time, this NUTbrown hare has to show up his baby.  sometimes i read it to jovie more truthfully and i’ll say things like:

“oh really, jr, you love me as high as you can hop?  well, looky me!  i love YOU as high as i can hop.  and that’s sooooo much more than you, that i bump my head on this tree limb.”      “awww, that’s so sweet that you love me to the meadow.  i love you PAST the meadow, over the stream and all the way to gramma’s house, for that matter!  so there!”

so, yeah, i tend to take on a tone when i read this sometimes.

because, finally, this poor poor baby bunny has come up with so many ways to show his love.  surely his dad can’t love him more than that!  he exhausts himself when he says “i love you to the moon!  (b/c surely there’s nothing farther than the moon!)”

oh, but you poor poor baby.  even when you’re sleeping, that dad has to show you up & get the last word.  b/c of course.  he loves him to the moon……   and back!!

it might be a shorter book if the author just let the dad say “i love you infinity to the infinitieth power” like all the other very mature folks.

harumph!

luckily, jovie’s not as discriminant when it comes to books as her dad and i apparently are.  she loves them.  she plays in her bucket o’ books as much as her toys, i think.  and she knows the word enough to go get one when we ask.  (when she wants to, of course…..  ahem!)

here she is enjoying some bathtime reading:

um, honey- it's upside down.

if you say so......

aaahhh. much better!

and, yes. that is her baby bathtub in the big tub.  this was at the end of may, and the first night she actually went upstairs to her bathroom.  b/c until then we saw no need in breaking our backs.  kitchen sink it was!  then we thought that perhaps 10.5 months was certainly time enough to go to the big bathtub.

pool time

day 1- loved it. surprisingly w/o needing any coaxing at all.  immediately began to splash:

splashy-splash!!

day 2- more like how i thought day one would’ve been.  (you can’t hear the whine that accompanies this picture:)

i don't wanna touch the water

day 3- somewhere in between.      <we were an “expert” at going to the pool, so we didn’t bring any film…….     oops>

but it’s official.  our pool is open for business!  & days 4, 5, etc….  have been a great success!   she even loves her ladybug raft!

this is so cool!

oh, by the way,  this marks our 101st post!!!  thanks for keeping up with our adventures!

Baby Book Review

Today’s selection is “Happy Baby Words” by Roger Priddy.

I was optimistic about “Happy Baby Words” given Roger Priddy’s previous works including “Bright Baby Colors”, “Snowy Bear”, and “Funny Faces Dizzy Dragon”. It begins by instantly capturing your attention by proffering the following: “My face: Happy or sad? What kind of face should I make?”  Though the same has been asked countless times in literature, none have done so this bluntly and often not immediately on page one. Regardless of the approach, the question nonetheless forces the reader to examine himself and others, their presentation to the world, and their existence therein.

Priddy then moves to the body, explaining that “I’ve got a lot of growing to do”. Whether Priddy is examining his own self-worth or the readers is open to interpretation; however it is clear that he is out rightly challenging Dostoyevsky’s principles of satisfying human need, which, unfortunate to the reader, parallel most other critics on this subject. There are also images of various body parts – hands, feet, noses, etc., which are a nuisance to the actual message attempting to be conveyed here. Perhaps Priddy wants to provide assistance to those who have trouble grasping his intention?

Unfortunately the book goes downhill from this point. There are ramblings about meal time, play time, bath time and so on; presenting a disjointed mess of a logical thought pattern. Photograhic images of each point presented persist throughout the entirety of the book, captured in a stongly utilitarian fashion, continuing an unnecessary distraction and further driving home the point of the need to provide a crutch to the bourgeois reader. The chapter on Dress Time was wholly unneeded – I am well aware of what a shirt and a pair of pants look like. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say if you don’t know what piece of furniture you sleep in each night, Priddy clears that up pretty swiftly.

Though his existentialist ideals are prevalent, Priddy’s approach here is tired and pedantic. No new ideas are presented and the style is formulaic and boring. Come on Roger, the same book has been written hundreds of times! I was looking forward to a fresh style and a thought provoking read, but those are clearly not found in “Happy Baby Words.”

Here's Jovie Pointing Out the Obvious Flaws in the Book

we’ll call her ‘fang’

sorry it’s a tad blurry:

lonely tooth

look carefully.  you can click the picture for larger view of 3 teeth:

just 3.

this is what you come for:

our baby girl is eleven months old!!   duuuuuuude.

101.8

this is not jovie’s favorite radio station.  it is actually the reading on the thermometer a few days ago when she got her first fever.

one week shy of 11 months, and we finally got to see what kind of kid she’d be when she was sick.  you hear sometimes how being sick changes things…. personalities, routines, etc…

i’m developing a theory that it makes the family revert back to newborn times.  b/c that seems to be what happened to jovie.  instead of the nice naps we have grown acccustomed to, she decided to go back to the days where she wouldn’t nap, but for possibly 15min or 30 at most.  with lots of crying in the duration.  wait- did i say crying??  no, i mean ear-piercing-blood-curdling-glass-shattering-screaming.  

well, it wasn’t like that ALL day.  at least, not when we held her.  The Mr. picked a fine time to decide to work from home this week….   tho’ it is The Mr.’s fault that we have a fever at all.  he has the smallest of colds this weekend.  unlike last time- in february—where his whole workgroup got it, and it was BAD.  this time- pretty minor.  and we weren’t diligent this time about keeping him away from her.  we discussed it.  but, really-  she’s ~11mos old.  isn’t it about time we let that immune system work? 

so on tuesday (after sleeping all the way thru the night w/o any peep at all) i noticed after breakfast she had a little runny nose.  it began when she started to “snorfle” [for the potters in the group, that's what i call what haylee used to do]….  she wrinkles up her nose and sniffs in and out.  she does this not cold-related.  but this time, there was stuff to snorfle.

not a big deal, this runny nose.  just a little here and there; she even let me use the aspirator (which has rarely been needed).  she seemed fine.  was playing pretty good.  until she decided not to.  she would rather be held, please.

of course- i thought it was probably due to the fact that daddy was home.  she tends to change a few habits when this happens.  so when she refused to nap, i thought it was b/c of him as well.  by that time, her nose wasn’t even running very much.

as the day went on, just around the time she was grating on our nerves- what with the holding and the holding and the not-getting-any-work-done-here holding… i finally picked her up after she didn’t eat much dinner and i noticed she was quite hot.

so, poor baby.  but really- it was gone by yesterday afternoon, and she hasn’t had a runny nose much at all.  nor is it stuffy.

yesterday was a little ruf.  she was fussier in the early part of the day than she had been on tuesday when it all began.  again- going back to the reverting to newborn stage:  at one point the only thing that calmed her was my rhythmic swaying/shushing.  and she even wouldn’t go down for a nap until daddy held her and she slept in his arms first.  that hasn’t happened in many months. 

we’re glad she’s back to her newer old-self today.  happy, playful little girl who at this very moment is still sleeping!

<<<visualize an adorable picture of mommy & jovie watching baby einstein while holding flopsy under a blanket here.   daddy was too busy at work for me to ask him to take her first “sick” pic…… but wow, it woulda been cute!>>>

bits & pieces

altho’ The Mr. & i likely not going to make it a regular habit, we have all been able to enjoy going to a real restaurant for lunch on 2 occasions.  i would like to think that because we ease jovie into things is the reason why she handled both occasions so very well. 

of course, we have to ease me into it as well…  the first time, i didn’t have any snacks or water for her.  and it would have been a perfect opportunity to forcefeed give her some water while waiting for the waitress or our food. 

the 2nd time i was prepared, and she was a big girl eating her fruit puffs while we had lunch.  both times the waitresses brought us her highchair and then asked if we needed a kids’ menu!?!  i hope that’s just b/c they don’t have kids of their own, and not because people regularly order their not-one-year-olds hamburgers.

i know it doesn’t seem like a big deal to the rest of y’all, but the fact that The Mr. & i have an option for lunch now is like opening up a whole new world to us.  yes, yes…  if you’re my family or Gramma & Grampa, you’re saying “back in my day we didn’t go to restaurants!!!”.  and if you’re not one of those then you’re saying “who cares?  babyx has been going to outback since month1!”

however, if you know us in person, you know that the archives of this blog is quite mild compared to how things really were.  and if you’re not sure why we feel we needed to wait to take jovie out in public, then let me remind you of a few things. 

here she is at Beef O’ Brady’s, her first time ever at a sit-down joint:

i'll have the coaster with a side of straw, please.

by the way- in linking Beef’s site, i never realized it was such a chain!  our 2nd restaurant was at a true local-chain near our house.

both times it rained, which she didn’t mind at all.

other “news” is that daddy’s been having to travel.  unlike holland, tho’, he’s been home on the weekend.  which has been very nice.  luckily she still doesn’t get that he’s gone (sorry, daddy!) because he leaves at the asscrack of dawn very early in the morning.  so by the time she wakes up, she’s moved onto whatever memories a 10mo dreams about. 

she has been regularly feeding herself the aforementioned fruitpuffs.  the other day, it was all she wanted to eat. no amount of mush from a jar was going to placate her.  so the past couple of days, i’ve tried to give her the spoon (which i have done months before with some success) and she looks at it as if it’s this newfangled discovery.  with prunes, oatmeal, whatever all over and notatall in her mouth. 

with her wonderful dexterity comes new food territories…  however, maybe she is my child afterall because this is going to be slow-going.  she makes the cutest dern faces, tho.  this past weekend, we had our first taste of real food.  the smidgiest of watermelon pieces.  which don’t dissolve at all like the fruit puffs (which she honestly is starting to chew on; but i guess all the dissolving really helps).  oh the confusion on her face when we were smacking our mouths up and down trying to convince her to chew her food and not just down it!   seriously, y’all.  smidge!  miniscule.  fit for an ant!

she is constantly enthralled with yiminy & doh.  most of the time, she starts to talk/babble when they come in her sight.  and quite a few times, she watches yimmy as he walks back and forth vying for my attention while i’m feeding her.  she’s actually getting better at petting yiminy a tad more gently.  we have a long way to go here!  

before i began this post, i put her down for her afternoon nap, and she tried to kiss me.  the great thing about babies this small is that we can make up what we want to about what it is she’s actually doing.    but she has done this to both The Mr. & i on quite a few occasions, so we think we may be onto something.  she has no clue how it should be done- which makes it all the cuter when she opens her mouth wide and throws it on our shoulder, nose, haphazard part of the face.

yes, she does this with her toys, too.  but nevermind about that.

actual conversation

sunday, may 10th- mother’s day:

• Me: thank you for the sweet cards & gift.  that was thoughtful.
• Mr: you’re welcome.
• Me: ……can i tell you something funny?
• Mr:  sure.
• Me: i’m NOT saying that you should’ve, or that i wanted you to get Clemson for me, but i was surprised that you didn’t, is all.
• Mr: ??? ok?
• Me: I thought you were going to…
• Mr: why?
• Me: well, it’s just that a few days ago, you mentioned needing to call your dad instead of emailing. on the same night i was going out to dinner.
• Mr: oh, ok.
• Me: and then, when you didn’t call & yesterday you said you had to call your mom right around the time they’d be leaving, but not right then because you were feeding jovie and you needed 2 hands (???)…
• Mr: i was feeding her.
• Me: no, i know. but i thought you were making an excuse b/c i was around. you ended up calling them when i was upstairs getting dressed.
• Mr: yeah. hmmm.
• Me: so since you never call them, i assumed it was b/c you had to get Clemson sent to them b/c obviously you couldn’t send him here if you were surprising me, since i’m home all day. and also because you knew i didn’t buy him & there was only one left.
• Mr: right. funny.

monday, may 11th- after The Mr. left for a business trip:

so it was already on the way…

The Mr. is fantastic at gift-giving & surprises.   i think i’ll keep him.

bit of nostalgia

i’m a sucker for nostalgia.  maybe you’ve picked up on that?  and now that jovie’s getting older, and around the age that THEYsay she’ll be choosing a “lovey”, i’ve been thinking of my own.  growing up i had 3 that i remember. 

i grew up in columbia, SC- home of the gamecocks.  my whole family (like a zillion) were fans of the gamecocks.  except my brother, kenny  (him again).  he was a fan of the big rival- clemson tigers.  of course being the youngest, and a girl…  i never cared about football.  i always “rooted” for the gamecocks as much as saying “yay” can be called “rooting”.  still, growing up i always wanted USC to win.  it didn’t make sense not to, since i lived in columbia.

one year, i had gotten a tiger-shaped stuffed animal pillow.  of course i had no idea what to name him, so i used all of my brain power and named him Clemson.  i slept with him nightly.  although admittedly, i don’t think i had him for very long.  i’m not sure what happened to him, but i don’t have very many memories of him when i was older.

interestingly enough, i grew up and graduated from clemson.  my family & friends were confused and would ask why i’d ever go there since i “hated” them so much.  but i knew i wasn’t a great big fan, and i wasn’t going to let football determine what school i went to.  i was the only freshman on “the hill” who would pull for the gamecocks instead of the tigers.

besides, why would i go to USC and live at home when i could go 2 hours away w/ my BFF?  turned out to be a fantastic decision.  i love the school.  gorgeous campus, great education school, and- oh yeah- that’s where i met The Mr.

my freshman year, i became friends w/ a girl who lived on the 3rd floor, right below me.  (what a fantastic view of the stadium i had—- didn’t care about football, but was very exciting to be a part of it all!)  and how completely random that this girl from maryland had the exact same pillow!

i digress.  recently this has been on my mind because i’m remembering some of my loveys from when i was little.  recently, i took what memory i had of Clemson in my head & searched on google something like:  “stuffed tiger pillow vintage”  and the FIRST entry i came to was the exact one i was looking for!  i was pretty amazed.  (i’m not that great at googling). 

after all this, i had to hunt for the one and only picture i thought i had of Clemson.  so, here…. travel back to 1978 and see a very sleepy mpotter:

4 years old

oh, and look!  there’s coco!  that’ll be another story…..