Buhbuh!

The above picture features Charlotte's favorite new thing: buhbuh! That's bubbles, for those of you who don't speak baby. She's so into bubbles that she belts out "buhbuh" anytime we walk within sight of the bright yellow or green bubble containers.

We celebrated Charlotte's 11-month-birthday this week. She seems like such a little girl suddenly--no longer the little round helpless baby. I love how she's exploring her world. And she's learning so many new things, absorbing information like a fat little sponge. She's starting to do some of the baby signs we've been showing her for months. Her favorite is the sign for "hat," which involves patting the top of your head. Every time she sees Jeff wearing a hat, or a baseball cap hanging on a doorknob, or a character in one of her books wearing a hat, she makes the sign. Do I even need to say how adorable that is?

She now does the signs for duck, hat, bird, sleep, cat, ball, more, and her own version of dog. Bird, hat and sleep are new this week. It hardly takes any time for her to pick up something new...again, the little sponge.

Some friends of ours here in Athens had a baby last week. I ran into them today out for a walk with their new daughter. She's just a sweet, brand-new little bundle, much like Charlotte was 11 months ago. When I got home, Charlotte suddenly looked so...huge. Mobile. Competent. I was amazed. I am, every day.

One Year Ago

I was sorting through some of my image files on my computer tonight, and I came across this photo, which was taken one year ago today.

My, how things have changed.

Happy...

...birthday to my dad, who turns 51 today. Last year, for his 50th, I was enormously pregnant and unable to make the trip to Iowa to help celebrate. This year, too, we couldn't get to Iowa, but I was happy to spend the day with Charlotte instead of with my bulging belly. I love my dad, and I love seeing how he's fitting well into his new role as grandpa.

...Mother's Day to all the mothers in my life: my mom, my mother-in-law, my grandma, and Jeff's grandma. We were happy to promote you all to the next tier up in mother-ness (grandma, grandma, oma and great-grandma, respectively).

...baby Charlotte has been making some leaps and bounds lately. She's started climbing the stairs (gulp) making necessary the quick scramble to improvise a baby gate. She's saying quite a few more words ("buhbuh" for bubbles, "boh" for book, "bah" for ball, "gleen" for green, "lalalow" for yellow, "boo" for blue). She's starting to give kisses, which usually means puckering up or humming and pressing her head onto your face.

...is what you will be when I post a new video of Charlotte later this week!

For your reading pleasure, a poem by Jeff:

Baby’s First Booger
- for Charlotte, 10 months

I showed it to her, as proof
that my brutal raid on her nose –
all that effort in the face of her screaming,
her twisting and flailing –
hadn’t been for nothing.

“See?” I said, holding it up for her. “This
is what I was after. That thing
was in your nose!”
She looked. She stared. She reached. She took. It stuck.
She tried to take it off
with a finger from the other hand,
but it stuck to that one too, of course.

Eventually she got sick of it all,
shook her fists in frustration,
then lost interest.
It was time for a nap.

An hour later, she’d produced another.
Same routine, same struggle, opposite nostril.
After the liberation, I again presented the bounty, the evidence
to show that some things don’t make sense at the time,
but are really for the best.
“I’ll bet you can breathe a bit better now,” I said.
But she wasn’t messing around. This time
she grabbed it right away
and put it in her mouth.

All Back Home



We've returned home to Athens after a week-long trip to Iowa for my grandpa's funeral. The trip was exhausting, both physically and emotionally, but I'm very glad for how smoothly everything went. Planning a 24-hour round-trip roadtrip at the 11th hour, scrambling to find people to cover my teaching for the week (thanks, Erin, Kristin and Kurt!), packing and loading up the car after a day of teaching and grad classes...I'm really surprised there weren't more glitches and disasters.


The relative smoothness of the trip allowed me to devote my mental and emotional energy to joining my family in mourning the loss and celebrating the life of my grandpa.


The picture above is of Charlotte enjoying the tulips in Scholte Gardens like a good little Dutch girl.

For more on my grandpa's death, you can read my dad's blog on the last three weeks.

Goodbye, Opa

Melvin Ernest Deur

June 1, 1921 - April 21, 2007

More Congrats!

Congratulations are due to Jeff's brother Mark and his fiancee, Katie. I hear the story of their engagement is one for the books! (Something involving Fifth Third Ballpark...you'll have to ask Mark). Congratulations, you crazy kids!

Duh! (Duck)

It seems Charlotte has said her first word (other than mama and dada): Duh! Which, naturally, means duck.

There are many ducks in Charlotte's life. There's her rubber ducky that she bathes with. There's the duck on her plush yellow Little Einstein block. There's all the pictures of ducks in her various books, including fluffy feathered ducks in her touch-and-feel farm animal book. There's her stuffed purple duck with the crazy eyes that Grandpa and Grandma Deur gave her for Easter. The purple duck quacks and has fuzzy white hair on top of his head; it's her favorite. When she sees purple duck, she says "Duh!" It happens enough that I don't think it's coincidence.

So it's only appropriate that we got to introduce Charlotte to the real thing yesterday. We all took a walk into town, and as we were walking past one of the frat houses on campus, I noticed something strange. A few guys were sitting out front and they appeared to have little creatures perching on their shoulders. I peered more carefully, and saw...Duh! Yes, baby ducks. I asked if we could come see the ducks, and they were obliging.

Charlotte appeared less enthusiastic about the real thing than she is about pictures of ducks or even the plush purple example. But she did try to squeeze the little baby duck, perhaps to hear him quack. As I removed her little hand from around the poor ducky's neck, I realized I was probably more excited about the baby duckies than she was. But who could blame me? They're adorable! Duh, indeed!

Tragedy

We've spent all evening watching the terrible news from Virginia Tech.

I certainly can't imagine what the students at VTech went through today.

While I was scanning GoogleNews, I came across this article: major school shootings.

The stress faced by students is well documented. In my almost-six quarters of graduate studies, I've seen two students drop out for various reasons. I've also witnessed countless freak-outs by my friends in grad school, ranging in severity from compulsive M&M eating to excessive partying. And I too have felt the intense pressure of making the grade. (Confession: the compulsive M&M eating was me).

My point isn't necessarily related to today's events. I was just thinking about the kind of pressure students face, whether self-motivated or not.

Today as I was walking to my car after class, I was thinking about what it would be like to have the idyllic spring afternoon broken by gunshots, to have my classroom invaded by an armed man. What would I do? How would I react?

I was hurrying home to see my baby and I didn't even notice that my backpack was unzipped. As I swung my bag off my shoulder, my laptop fell out and clattered to the ground. Any other day, I would have been devasted. I probably would have said words I wouldn't repeat in polite company. I might have hunted down some M&Ms.

Today, however, I just picked up my Dell (which is working fine, by the way) and got into my car. There were more important things going on.

I guess my point is that it comes down to perspective, and your ability to put things into perspective. I'm glad I've been able to do that.

Update

The last time I wrote a real post on here was just after spring break, and as I've just wrapped up the third week of spring quarter, I feel a little ashamed to have taken so long to write. But this quarter is shaping up to be much busier than I had anticipated. Although I'm teaching the same course I taught last quarter, the daily work and minor adjustments to the syllabus take up a good amount of time. And I'm only taking one grad course, but the reading load for that class is pretty heavy.

But besides all that, the biggest thing that has kept me from updating is that I've just been busy spending time with Charlotte. Right now I hear her waking up from her nap, which means I'll have to pick this update up later. But rest assured that Miss Charlotte is doing well, growing by leaps and bounds, and amazing us every day with her growth and change both mentally and physically.

Happy Easter!

New Movie!

Charlotte has been busy!

What happened to spring break??

I knew I would feel like this...but where did my break go?

I started spring quarter today. My class seems like a good bunch, and since I'm teaching almost the same syllabus as last quarter, I think it should be fairly smooth sailing. My grad class (my last grad class during my MA!) seems pretty cool. Debunking the Victorians! Woo!

I don't have time to write now, but I owe this blog a video and a nine-month-birthday post. So check back!

Whew.

Grades are filed. One final paper is in, the other is still pending, thanks to a last-minute extension from my professor. Winter quarter is now officially over.

Spring break is never long enough, especially when compared to our long, luxurious six-week winter break. Only one week? That's crazy.

Fortunately, this year Jeff and I (and Charlotte) are staying put. Last year Jeff went to Arizona (where it was unseasonably cold--bah!) and I flew solo to Iowa to visit my family. Well, not quite solo...Miss C came along, too.

That was such an uncomfortable flight, in part because I think Charlotte picked midair over Iowa to flip from head-up to head-down. It felt...weird.

This year we can just sit back and relax and wait for the visitors to come to us. Which they are--my folks will be here Wednesday.

In Charlotte news (because I know why you people are here, and it's not for me!): she has a top front tooth busting through, and it's been wreaking all sorts of havoc on her sleep. I also caught her grinding her bottom teeth against the new interloper. Let's hope the partner tooth emerges at the same time to lessen the sleep disturbances.

Watch for a video soon. Until then, you'll have to be content with the picture above, one of the "rejects" from a photo shoot I did a couple weeks ago. (Prints coming soon, grandparents!) Note the arm-rolls.

Congratulations!



Big congrats to Jeff's brother Steve and his girlfriend...I mean fiancee...Katy. That's right, those crazy kids got engaged tonight. Charlotte's congratulations are forthcoming.

Video Evidence

Charlotte crawls!

Crawling


Around Christmas time, Charlotte began getting up on her hands and knees, rocking back and forth. After a while, this rocking turned to crawling--backwards. In no time, Charlotte began making her way around the room, but always in reverse.

Just yesterday, something clicked. Jeff and Charlotte were playing with a ball on the floor, sitting up a few paces apart. Charlotte decided she wanted to get to Jeff, got down on her hands and knees, and...crawled! In a forward direction!

It was a little stop-and-go, and she did a face plant after her first attempt. But she wasn't discouraged, and tried again. When I got home from school, she crawled to me. Now it's just a day later and she's already much better at it, almost a smooth crawler.

One lesson I take from this experience is that babies will do things in their own time. I felt weird every time someone would ask "Is she crawling?" and I would respond, "Yep, but only backwards." I know that crawling isn't even considered a developmental step for babies because so many skip it, never do it, or do some variation of it (creeping, army-crawling, rolling, etc.) All the weeks of reverse crawling that led up to this sudden forward motion were practice, warm-up for the big event, which she did when she was ready for it.

New Video

Charlotte claps!

New Skill!

Charlotte's learned a new skill: clapping her hands. The photo above captures her in process of applauding. Now that she knows to clap her hands, she does it whenever she's excited about something. The facial expression in this photo seems to indicate that she's excited about the poop she's working on!

Jeff's not one to toot his own horn, so please allow me to do it for him:

Why Athens County? essay contest

Congratulations, Jeff!