Sea Changes

Winter is coming. But before that, we have to get through the Fall. And it is madness, I tell you. We have thrown ourselves overboard into unknown seas. 

I'm back to work at a wonderful new job with great new people. And I have to say, compared with a full day alone with the bebe, working seems easier. It's always nice to do new things, and at the moment I'm sort of revelling in the fact that I get paid to put on nice clothes and interact with adults all day long in an environment full of endless free coffee. And when I snack on an apple at work, it's all mine. There is no child hanging on my leg, gesticulating at my fruit and chanting: "Appie! Appie? Appie! Appie?" I can use the restroom and shut the door. You know. The little things. 

Anyone need any crayon on their wall? Anyone?

However. This also means I need to cherish all the hugs and kisses I can get from my mini mouse when we are together. Because while there are many joys relating to the new job, kissing my baby's squishy cheeks is not one. And I love kissing my baby's cheeks. 

But of course, she's not a baby anymore. She is a full-fledged toddler. You can tell because of how she toddles, mincing about like a tiny drunken tyrannosaurus. She follows me around the apartment (on two feet!), playing peek-a-boo around the edge of the furniture, unloading our drawers, crayoning on the mirror, blowing kisses across the room. She tries to put on her own clothes (so far no luck, but we're bullish), insists on feeding herself, and seems to understand basically everything we say. Well, stuff that matters for her, anyway. For example, any mention of fruit precipitates gleeful chirping. Any mention of b-e-d-t-i-m-e results in distinctive fleeing behaviours. At the moment, she flees with all the speed and grace of a chubby flightless parrot. It's adorable. 

Noodle at the playground. Now that she's a toddler, she can do playgrounds! (Well, sort of.) This photo is from my mom's visit. Consider it a preview. 

And despite my secret desire for her to stay one year old forever, she is off to kindergarten. She is currently in the painful phase referred to as The Transition. This is where a parent takes her, stays for a while, and then leaves for ever longer periods. Alex is taking care of this process at the moment. He has a theory--not unreasonable--that our little mommy's girl will be more likely to accept her new environment if someone besides said mommy drops her off every day. It has been five days, and results have reportedly been mixed. Apparently her new teacher does a lot of carrying her around. Since I pretty much have chronic back pain from lugging the chunk around, Ms. Teacher has all my sympathies. 

As does the Noodle. Her new teachers are lovely, as are the other kids in the Frog Group, but of course switching from long, quiet, one-on-one mornings in our living room to the mayhem of the classroom would be a bit of a challenge for anyone. 

Because, you know, children are lunatics. On the morning I went there was a three year-old girl parading around with a naked doll on a plastic plate. She asked no one in particular if they would like a slice of her baby, and then pretended to serve everyone a piece. She was using an inch-long doll knife to pretend to cut into the baby's forehead. 
"Hmm," said the teacher, gently. "What are you doing, Betty?*

"This is a baby-cake," explained the girl. "A cake-baby."  

"Ah," said the teacher. "A cake that looks like a baby." 

The little girl looked up with her big, brown eyes and shrugged. "Ja. Okay." 

Cake-limb, anyone? 

I see cake limbs

This is not to suggest that my own Noodle* is some kind of placid angel. She spent a good deal of time last week trying to force feed another kid her age with a plastic drinking cup. 

"I don't think Lily* wants anything to drink," said the teacher. 

Lily's lower lip quivered as she tried to escape. 

"No no no," said the Noodle, shaking her head. "Baba dis daba." And shoved the cup in Lily's face again. 

You know what their classroom is like? A reef. The three and four year-olds are like sharks. As the biggest and strongest, they can nip down and take what they like (well, as long as their teacher overlords don't see). 

The two year-olds, though, are the piscine residents of our coral paradise. Some of these fish spend the day tearing around in manic circles, while others gently float, opening and closing their mouths every once in a while. They eat the lower forms of life and poop sand. Both the fish and the sharks swim in schools and demonstrate social, even very loving and altruistic behaviour, but are ultimately alone in their little egos, hunting for Things To Do. 

Now the one year olds, however, while technically mobile, are much more like a bunch of anemone. Perhaps jellyfish. They don't really get around. They can spend minutes alone, fiddling with their teeth or a single counting bean or a corner of the carpeting. But should the stormy ocean currents blow them into one another, beware! The first probing swipes of each other's faces are followed swiftly by alarmed poking and then outright violence and defensive secretions, like tears and spit. 

Look how much our dearest pookie pants has changed!

But there are plenty of tempting treats for a young wiener in the Frog Group. First of all, there are endless toys, and endless children to observe, which is the Noodle's favourite hobby. Secondly, there are bananas like basically every day. Third, her classroom features a kiddy pool full of chestnuts, which, you know, is pretty sweet. And as far as assuaging my own deep-seated concerns, I notice that the group includes plenty of tiny noodles who seem happy and comfortable with their caretakers. So I'm sure it'll just be a matter of days until she's happy to go. At which point, I'll probably want to cry. 

Well, that's enough feelings for one sitting. I also need to post photos from our trip to the zoo and my mom's visit this past weekend, but those will have to wait until next time. 

******************************

*Names have been changed to protect the dangerously young. 

So, So Bad at Blogging: All of July!

I haven't posted anything here for nearly a month, which must be some kind of sad record. Lame! In my defence, it is summer and my parents were in town and we've been spending as much time as possible outdoors, catching the odd breeze, swimming in the Danube, and generally trying not to melt away. The weather has turned a little cooler, and as it's now bearable indoors let me try and recall all of the things we were up to: 

Late last month we went to the beautiful wedding of our friends Jenny and Markus. It was a garden party and Noodle, like everyone else, had a blast. There were many other, bigger kids there who were all sweet to her, as were the grownups. She even ate some grownup food--vegetarian lasagna--except by "eat" I mean she sucked off all the bechamel sauce and spat the veggies out. That's my girl.  

Dad keeping an eye on our stuff as we took a playground
break after a long walk in the Lainzer Tiergarten.

My parents were here! As usual, they filled our lives with extra happiness for two whole weeks. The Noodle was delighted to be the center of attention. Unlike when she is stuck with boring old Mommy, who has to interrupt playtime to do the dishes and work and fold laundry and cook, when Grandma and Granddad are around every day is an endless party. 

Grandma and the Bubble

The grandparents also arrived, as is their habit, with suitcases stuffed full of books and toys and gorgeous gently-used hand-me-downs from the gorgeous and slightly older daughter of an old school friend, whom her parents sometimes call the Squish. Squishy, we are grateful. Your parents (and grandparents) have excellent taste and are supremely generous to boot. Thank you! 

But all this largesse was added into an apartment so stuffed that the walls seem to be creeping toward each other--but my parents, ever vigilant and willing to spoil their adult children rotten--were totally awesome and bought us another closet. They are amazing. 

Indeed they are so amazing that in the middle of their visit, Alex and I left them with our kiddo and went off for our first post-baby weekend alone. 

At the Villa Borghese

All hail the Pantheon, which
would be a wonder even if it
was built yesterday.

We flew off to Rome on a Friday afternoon, drank a lot of gin, ate a lot of pasta and saw an absurd number of impossibly perfect and impossibly ancient buildings. 

We took one incredibly crappy 10-minute tour of the Colosseum (Never ever pay Follow Me tours anything. Ever.) that was followed by an awesome tour of the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill by a guy who is usually an actor but is a licensed guide on the side. 

If you're thinking of going to Rome I wouldn't bother...

...the place is just falling apart. 

Our guide was so engaging that we signed up for another two hour walk with him in the evening, after which we were totally wrecked but pleased by the vast amount of information we'd absorbed in the span of one day. I'm going to glue his business card into our Rome guidebook for our next trip, which needs to be soon and last longer.

We were trapped by this tiny gladiator, who later insisted
that we pay him five euros for the pleasure of having been
physically coerced into taking pictures. Five each, that is.
We gave him two, total, received a hearty
vaffanculo and were sent on our way.

On Sunday evening we returned home, fatter and happier. 

Our daughter, we noted, was also fatter and happier upon our return. Apparently my mom spent the whole weekend singing this kid nursery rhymes, letting Noodle strum her guitar, practicing walking and generally feeding this baby something every five minutes all day long. My dad, who had cabin fever, undertook numerous household repairs that wouldn't even have occurred to us but which make our lives better. He even...and this is actually just embarrassing...cleaned our bedroom. True story. My father cleaned my bedroom. I am 31 years old. I am married. WTF. I love my parents. 

Now my parents have gone and we're back to our usual routine. Weekends we've spent down by the Danube with friends and every week day that isn't rainy we spend a couple of hours at one of the nearby playgrounds. 

This is on a constitutional with my parents. We are led by my father, who ends up using his cell phone's GPS to chart a course along an invisible pig trail to nowhere that forces us straight through a waist-high embankment of brambles and hog shit. Everyone ends up either bleeding or having probably contracted some swine-borne disease that won't manifest for six months, when it will be too late. A good day out. 

The Noodle has changed so much in the last month. She's right in between being a baby and a toddler. Her lovely pumpkin visage is becoming a little more butternut-squash, by which I mean thinner, and her little arms and legs are just a little less chunky. Her hair is starting to look like real hair. She pulls herself up on everything and cruises around the room at great speed, although so far no apparent ambition to stand or walk without support. She's much more interested in other children, and in the sandbox she'll sometimes crawl over and annoy the great big toddlers who are baking their sand cakes and digging pointlessly elaborate holes. 

My pookies.

Noodle babbles all the time, tries very hard to sing whenever music is playing ("DAAAAAAAH"), does the classic baby dance (bouncing on her knees, pushing her tummy forwards and backwards and saying "yeahyeahyeahyeah"), and is starting to use a couple words. In addition to using the baby signs for "milk" and "more," she can definitely say no, either by shaking her heard or babbling "neineineineinen" ("nein" is no in German), and she says "das," "this" and "that," which often sound like "dis" or "dat". 

"That?" she points. 
"That is the cat," I say. "Shiva the cat. Cat."
"Ngat. Daaat," she says. "Dis. Das. That." And then she laughs with amazement at her own brilliance.
It's pretty cute. And of course, I think she is kind of brilliant. 

Lastly, and this is a big one: WE HAVE TEETH. Two of 'em. Okay, at the moment they're only a third of the way out--but they are proof of concept. The teeth really do exist. To go with the teeth we have purchased a baby toothbrush and some baby toothpaste, and have taken up the habit of brushing those narrow slivers morning and night. It's a two second job, which may be why she doesn't seem to mind much. I have no idea how you are supposed to get a baby to rinse and spit, though. Our current method is to brush and then spill water down the front of her pyjamas. It's a good system, but we'd take any advice you might have. 

Our current all-time favorite photo, thanks to Jenny's wedding photographer.

OKAY. And I herewith declare this blog updated! 

The Greatest Gift of All

Diverse toys + Mega Pooh

Consider a baby’s toy. Is it safe? Is it beautiful? Is it educational? Was it hand-stitched by ruddy-cheeked, well-insured farmers’ wives, or shat out in a plume of factory smog in a land whose only comparative advantages are coal and suffering?

There are many criteria by which to judge children’s playthings. But as anyone with a baby knows, the only thing that really matters is how loud it is.

I can instantly rank McNoodle’s toys in order of noisiness simply by recalling them in my order of preference. Quiet is good, noisy is horrible. Stuffed animals > foam blocks > that one stuffed bear that has a jingle bell embedded in its head > rustling fabric books > the fabric dog with the crinkly ears and honking foot > plastic stacking cups (individually lovely, collectively horrific) > rattles all sorts > battery-operated monstrosities.

In addition to toys, Noodle enjoys snacking on paper and plastic.

Battery-operated monstrosities, in fact, deserve their own category. The noodle loves them because they provide total and instant sensory overload. They light up and whirr and beep out little ditties about the alphabet. For the same reason, I only break out these babies in moments of true desperation.

Yet among these devilish gadgets is one so abhorrent it deserves special mention. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you: the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Learning Wallet (only $9.99!).

Sure it’s electrified and loud, and almost certainly was not handcrafted on the banks of a Norwegian fjord, but what really sets it apart is its message. No numbers or letters over here, guys. My father Santa brought this in a fit of apparent insanity at Christmas. 

We unpacked it under the tree, opened its smiling blue cover and it burst into song: “Open up your wallet! Do you see a FRIEND? Maybe there’s some money for you to spend!”

Okay. There are a couple ways we can interpret these lyrics. The line “do you see a friend?” could be a totally random aside. “Let me open up my wallet and… hey! There’s Jimmy! Hi Jimmy! So anyway, do I have enough coins for this soda or what?” I’ll admit it’s possible. It is possible. 

Or, OR, this wallet is a sign of the End Times and the “friend” refers to one’s dwindling cash and mostly maxed-out credit cards. “Gee, I really want this sweater…which of these bits of plastic is gonna be my friend today? Is it you, little Visa? Or you, pretty Mastercard? Oh Chase. It’s been so long.”
Any other super obnoxious toys out there? Or am I overreacting? 

Try a Little Tenderness

You know that Otis Redding song "Try a Little Tenderness"? It's the one about being nice to a young girl who is "tired of wearing that same old shaggy dress". Well, like every other song that was ever written, if you just change one or two words around it applies perfectly to babies.

This is a (long) aside, but did anyone else have this phase in their early adolescence when they first became aware that the world is full of sex references? You start hearing about mysterious things like foreplay and fetishes and positions (for or against?), and realize that you can often take things two ways (*snigger*). And once you start to crack the code, you realise that popular culture is a 24/7 industrial-grade firehose of sex.  

My parents and teachers appeared totally oblivious but we who were in the know were privy to a non-stop barrage of sex on the radio, TV, movies, poetry, novels, comics, paintings... It turned out that sex was the basis of modern civilisation and all commercial enterprise. Once the veil was lifted, it seemed to me that Pop! Goes the Weasel was the only non-church song I knew that didn't have a sex reference, and even there if you snickered properly you could make it sound vaguely filthy.   

I think until I was 12 or 13 I just thought all those radio songs were about kissing. Which is astonishing considering that ubiquitous hits at the time included, for example, I'll Make Love to You (I mean, HELLO), Freak Me (opening lyric: "Let me lick you up and down")  and this song, which is basically like singing: "Hooray for your body/ let us have imaginative sex/ but no need to improvise/ I'll spell it out in the hook". 

I specifically remember hearing this song on the radio: "Mary Moooooon, she's a vegetarian/ *incomprehensible*/ She loves me so/ She hates to be alone/ She don't eat meat but she sure like the bone.".. and thinking, Ya. I know what THAT means, New Age Girl. And ohmygosh, the band is called Deadeye Dick. Subversive.

Anyway, I bring it up because since the baby came (not yet four months ago... but was there ever a time when she didn't exist?) every romantic song now seems like it was written about babies, for babies, with babies in mind. It's all so innocent now. All those kisses become sweet little baby smooches. Enchanting smiles are those priceless fleeting ones accompanied by drool and dimples.The dreams they are talking about are baby dreams, full of fluffy sheep and smiling stars. At Last. My Funny Valentine. I could go on. Having a baby is the great total de-sexualization of how I understand love songs. 

(Okay, that doesn't actually apply to "Freak Me" and "Stroke Me Up", but those only count as love songs in the grossest sense and even then it's a little iffy. Also, now that I am 30 and officially a mother I must point out that those songs are derogatory, vulgar and infinitely stupid. If songs about sex were cocktails, listening to them would be the equivalent of downing orange squash mixed with antifreeze when you could be getting down like scotch neat or something off the grapevine or perhaps a refreshing Hendricks and tonic. 

Anyway, to bring it back to the beginning of this post, "Try a Little Tenderness" is one of the songs I play for my baby to amuse myself, except our version is about young girls who grow weary of the same old diaper. It helps to remind me in my more aggravated moments that rather than joining the baby in a flood of frustration I should just try a little tenderness. 

Cute, right? But forget all that. I was wrong. What nonsense. The thing to try is a little BABY FORMULA. 

Until now I have been an exclusive breast feeder. But the other night I was going somewhere and was not able to pump, and so for the first time ever our sprout got fed a solid 200mL of formula. I felt so guilty, even though I am actually still breastfeeding. Whatever. The point is, she slurped that ish right up, slept for eight hours solid and was a warm dumpling of satiated joy all morning afterwards. The transformation was total, like a desert traveller who survived three months on bitter sips of mud before being given a whole goatskin of Evian. Redemption. Inner light. It was so awesome. Love and peace reigned for hours on end. So yes. Forget tenderness. Try a little formula instead. 

P.S. I just can't end this without noting that I am still breastfeeding so please do not yell at me. I'm not sure who I'm addressing this to other than my inner demons, who wear soft hair and natural fabrics and look surprisingly like members of the La Leche League. 

Boob: Once More, With Feeling!

Some time in the last two weeks our sprout hit a major developmental milestone when she parted her precious lips and, instead of crying, said, "Goo?" 

Her first sounds sounded vaguely like "hello" ("egh'looooo"), which was cute, and like "boob", which is even better. When she's upset she'll stick out her tiny little lower lip, say "booboobooboob," and drool. From a evolutionary perspective this adorableness is a pretty effective strategy, I have to say. 

Anyway, now we're trying to teach her that the sound "boob" has an actual meaning. 

"Boob?" I'll ask, encouragingly. "Are you hungry?" 

Alex says, "Is it time for a boob party*? Booooobies?" He points. 

I do a suggestive little shimmy. "Booooobs." 

Nava says "boobooboob." 

The cats pee on the floor. 

On one hand she doesn't really get it (it'll be months before she says a real first word and a few more after that before she really means anything she says). On the other hand, when she is unhappy, boob is always the answer so maybe she'll eventually put it together. 

I tried to film her saying "boob," but obviously as soon as I had my phone out she stopped. So here we have a video of me trying to coax her into saying boob, but with no success. The good news is that she makes other cute noises. 

I've read that kids don't remember anything that happens before they can talk (which will make that a dangerous little milestone). That had better be true, because her father and I are basically twelve-year-olds who are allowed to drive and buy candy whenever we want. Oh, and have children. (I'm beginning to realize why the world is in such a state.) Also, in two years Nava is going to walk up to some lady, point and say "BOOBS" and that will be our just deserts. 

____________

* Around here we refer to breastfeeding as "having a boob party," because infantile. When Nava was just a couple of weeks old we went down to the Lainzer Tiergarten for a walk. If you don't know (and if you don't live in Vienna, why would you), it's an enormous (really enormous) park with miles and miles of trail through woods and across meadows. If you like, as we did, you can pretend to enjoy some memorably bland gray food at the Rohrhaus. (Pro Tip: Bring a sandwich). Anyway, while we were there we spent some time eating ice cream on a scenic meadow that was riddled with a whole biology lesson's worth of animal poops. We sat in the sunshine, and confronted for the first time ever with sunshine, Nava freaked out. She continued to freak out all the back across several kilometres of trail and into the car, where she freaked out all the way home. During this time we pleaded and begged with her to relax because a "boob party" was just around the corner ("Think about it logically," as Alex likes to tell her when she is truly falling apart. "Let's analyze this situation together."). And so now we say "boob party".