The sights around our place these days

Helen has discovered a new skill. On Labor Day weekend, she learned to pull up to standing on the furniture. Since then, she does it constantly, almost like a compulsion. We see more and more of her innate personality in this - quiet, determined, unstoppable.

She frequently falls over and bumps her head, which makes her cry, but doesn't make her stop standing. She pulls up on the chair rails. She pulls up on our legs. She stands up in her crib after naps. She is trying her darndest to scale the vertical bars of the baby safety gate.

Can you tell just how darn proud of herself she is?

 

Anything she can scrape at with her vise-like grip is fair game for standing, including the sliding patio doors.

 

She refuses to even bend at the waist much of the time anymore. "I'll just stand, thank you, Dad."

Fortunately (??) for us, she just found a new passion, wshich may distract her at least once in a while from standing up.
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This shelf has a lot of cups. As Helen quickly demonstrated for us.

 



"My work here is done."

 Crawling, oddly enough, is still sketchy. She gets all the way up on her knees now, but only occasionally moves arms and legs in alternating fashion. Most often, she dives forward with both arms out, then pulls both legs up underneath herself, inchworm-style. She has clearly decided it isn't worth the bother when she could just learn to walk (run?) instead.

Violation

Reference the earlier post, about the rules of our house. For what it's worth, the kids should also know, as they raise their future families, that writing rules has been much easier than getting kids to follow the rules.

Yesterday, James (age 10) shared a story at dinner. We had been discussing, at some length, how the kids don't feel that they have enough time at school to eat their snacks or lunch. The end result is that their hunger eventually catches up to them, like last night when I couldn't find enough in the house to keep them fed. Maggie, our slow eater, particularly feels the pain of this problem, but apparently the hunger, and the injustice, bothers James, too. He wanted us to understand that every kid at school  struggles with hsaving enough time to eat their food. James piped up to tell us, with some excited animation in his voice and face, "I found a bag of chips in the trash that hadn't even been opened!"

"Hmm..." I offered, noncommittally, picturing a single-serve package of chips. "Seems a shame to pitch those instead of bring them home for another day."

James went on to describe it in more loving detail. "Yeah, it was Pringles. In the bathroom trash. It hadn't even been opened!"

A horrid thought began to take shape in my mind. "James - please tell me you didn't take it out of the trash and eat it?"

He blushed and looked down. "No, I didn't eat it. ... I saved it for another day," he murmured. Then he tried to backpedal. "But it was right on top! It was really just in the recycling bin for paper towel.And there weren't even any eaten."

Now the picture got one step worse in my mind. "James, was this a store package, or a ziploc bag with some Pringles put in it?" Yes, you can probably guess the answer, as I unhappily did. So, it wasn't even a hermetically sealed bag of chips in the trash recycling bin which my son was planning to eat.

It begins to occur to me that some lessons are never learned and some can be learned too well. James apparently has learned frugality, and "waste not, want not." He has learned that Mom rarely buys chips, so you sometimes have to make your own fortune in life. Yet, he apparently never quite internalized the basic Rule #2 of the household ("No playing in the trash").

As a parent, I have decided that sometimes pragmatism is at odds with a good principled position. I may need to let the kids take chips for snack once in a while, just so they don't feel a level of privation that drives them to dumpster diving.

The Rules

Soon after James was born, it became apparent that we needed to establish some ground rules. Not necessarily a comprehensive list, but a few basic tenets that were not to be violated. The list grew as James did, but proved to be remarkably resilient to the testing of all his younger siblings. In case the kids ever want to have a jump start on rules with their own families, I thought I should record our gained wisdom so far, for posterity.

Rule #1.  No eating paper.

Rule #2.  No playing in the trash.

Rule #3.  No urping (spitting up) on Mom and Dad.

Rule #4.  No squirming during your diaper change.

Rule #5.  No beating up on Mom and Dad.

Rule #6.  No throwing sand out of the sandbox.

Jeremy and I both feel that there must be a few that we are missing, here. Maybe I will think of them to add to the list as they become necessary for Helen...

Cousins!

Helen and her cousin Iain spent a few days getting to know each other at Grandma's house over the weekend. Just look at those faces! I think that these two have the potential to be major trouble together in the not-too-distant future.

Maggie looks like a 2nd grader - in time for Christmas

I am delinquent - it has been two weeks since Maggie achieved a double-negative grin and I haven't posted yet. So, for posterity, here it is. She had Grandma Di pull them both for her, a week apart. Can you tell by her face how proud she is of her toothless state?

Mackinac Bridge Walk

Labor Day 2011 ... Dad has been after me for several years now to revive a tradition from my youth - the annual Bridge Walk. I hadn't really thought the kids were ready before now. My own fear of heights translates to my fearfulness for them, so that I don't want them on a high bridge without me, and I don't want them up there when I am not sure if they are old enough to stay safe.

Well, this year, I finally gave in. James and Maggie really wanted to go this year, which mean John would want to be included. I didn't want Dad trying to manage all 3 on his own, so that put me on the hook. Once I realized that I would thus have to also take Helen, I knew that I would be needing another adult to help me make the drive there and back, at least, which put Jeremy on the hook for the walk as well.

So, that was how we found all six of us on the road before dawn this morning. We had been staying with Glen and Di for the weekend - an extended birthday party for Di, with all 8 cousins and their assorted adults creating happy mayhem for Grandma and Grandpa. Dad couldn't get the cheap motel he had hoped to reserve, and I am too cheap to pay for a Mackinac City motel. Of course, in the good old days, we just pulled off onto the beach west of St. Ignace and slept in the car. It would have been a bit romantic and nostalgically fun to wake again to the sounds of Lake Michigan lapping at the front tires of my bed. On the other hand, some things don't get better with age. Six people sleeping in a minivan with no toilet is one of those things.

Thus, we instead opted to stay Sunday night at Glen and Di's house. We rose at 5:30 and crept away shortly after 6 AM. With no traffic at all, we mad good time in the pre-dawn darkness, and found ourselves meeting Dad in Mackinac City by about 8:30. We then spent some time getting organized - we left Dad's car in a parking lot, drove all seven of us north, found a Glen's market for using the bathroom and buying breakfast (doughnuts and bananas), and pulled into the state park where we could eat in the picnic area, park our van, and make a 10-minute hike to the start of the bridge walk.

Hmm, is that my husband or the Unabomber sharing our tasty breakfast of champions in the St. Ignace state park before the walk?

Setting out....James forgot his jacket with a hood so he decided to improvise with a t-shirt to keep his head warm. He was not the oddest looking person there today, anyway.

Then, we were on the bridge and walking by about 10:30. John was definitely dragging his feet. He was tired. All the kids were a bit grumpy, actually. It was a cold, gray, windy morning. They spent some time complaining about being cold. in the same breath that they complained that I had made them bring an extra sweatshirt to wear. The crowds were sweeping us right along, though, so they didn't have much time to really work up to a full misery report. It was actually hard even to pause for photos, because we felt like we might be trampled. I don't recall feeling that way on past walks - maybe it was the weather that made people hustle so much, since I don't ever recall it being so cold, either. (It was about fifty degrees and overcast.)

Yes, I know Helen's face looks a bit cold and windblown, but I assure you that she was pnd she "walked" the full bridge in this cozy position.

Poor Grandpa had to lie down on the bridge for this shot, prompting a kind woman to stop and ask if he needed medical help. Ah, the indignities of aging.

As we passed the second tower, the sun came out, the air warmed up, and the downhill portion of the bridge just flew by. Before we knew it we were shuttling back across the bridge for the van, buying fudge, and on the road. We returned to Glen and Di's in Tustin just under 12 hours after we left - not bad considering it is a 2.5-3 hour drive from the bridge.

Looking happier as the end approaches and the sun comes out.

John didn't quite make the full walk of about 6 miles, altogether. Getting him up at 5:45 AM probably didn't help. Grandpa took pity on him after he had walked for more than 4 miles (including distance from parking).

Very, very tired boy. When Grandpa's shoulders gave out, he walked a bit more, then begged Dad for a ride. He promptly fell soundly asleep on top of Dad's head. I guess he really was tired.

And school tomorrow for all!

Personification

It is strange to realize that Helen is becoming a person. Yes, of course she has been a human all along. But now she is becoming a person. In her own right, an individual, with her own awareness, and preferences, and ideas.

Some of you might think this is an odd thing for me to write now, as Helen nears 7 months old. After all, it has been clear for quite some time now that she has a personality. She is clearly an intense, determined little soul She is very watchful, and yet also fun-loving and social. Still, up until now, she has been more or less content to have life happen to her.

Sure, she wants to be fed, and changed, and get sleep, and she will demand that these things be provided if we are too slow to offer. But otherwise, she has been content to be dragged from place to place, at our whims. She is picked up, put down, moved around, dozens of times a day, all with no say in it. We move her from the bed to the floor to the bath to the changing table to the floor to the exersaucer to the kitchen to the living room to the baby carrier to the car seat and so on, as our own needs dictate.

So today, I was surprised to have her very clearly communicate that she had developed her own agenda. First, she was playing in the living room when John walked out the front door, leaving the heavy door open so the full-height screen door was the only thing blocking her in. She made a beeline for it, and sat there, looking out, for a very long time. Now, she has always liked going outside - it is one of our standard tricks for calming her down. But this was like light bulbs coming on in her head. She seemed to realize that if she can't get herself outside, at least she can get herself over to look outside. She laid on her tummy in front of the door, propped her arms and head up, and watched outside, quiet as a mouse and content as ever.

Later in the day, I whisked her off the kitchen floor and carried her downstairs to the playroom floor so that I could do a 10-minute clean-up down there. She gets to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but not so much in the playroom, since I don't have activities that cause me to hang out there. Apparently, she liked the change of scene. When I picked her up and plopped her back down on the kitchen floor, she began to wail. Then she dragged/crawled/scooted over to the stop of the steps, looked down under the baby gate to her just lost playground, and mewed piteously. Really!

Floor shark

Our house has an odd new wildlife problem. Since I have not been able to make a concrete identification, I have decided to name the creature a "floor shark."

This floor shark is very stealthy. She moves about the house silently, and has no tell-tale dorsal fin to alert you to her presence. The only clues you might have to her imminent attack are the trails of white foamy spit-up she leaves in her wake.

You mustn't let her quiet manner deceive you. She can strike at any moment.While you might meet her in any room, her favorite hide-out is under the kitchen table. Anyone foolish enough to sit down to a meal in bare feet is likely to meet her. One moment you are pleasantly chewing your salad, and the next moment, you feel the razor-sharp teeth sinking into your flesh. She particularly loves toes. Bare toes. It is like a siren song to her. She senses them from the next room and slides in, undetected, attack. Consider yourselves warned.