We're Back...

And we're toasty. Our air conditioning is STILL STILL STILLLLLLL broken. Fonts and italics cannot contain my dismay. When we got home last night/this morning at 3 a.m. from the airport, it was 90 degrees in our apartment. On the first floor. I have no idea how warm it was upstairs. Where we slept. I mean, where we "slept," by which you should read "sweated and tossed and turned for a few hours."

But we're home. And our trip to Iowa was very nice. I even got to experience a tornado warning again! Very exciting. My mom and I and Charlotte crouched on a blanket in the basement for a half-hour, listening to crackly reports of funnel sightings over a radio. I love tornado warnings. Nothing came of it, which I also love.

More info and pictures later. For now, the one above will have to do.

Come Fly With Me

Just a quick post from the dismal subterranean room into which they herd the low-paying SkyBus patrons at the Columbus airport. We're flying out to visit my family in Iowa this week. Here's hoping Charlotte does well in the air...

Setting: Dining Room. Charlotte is in her highchair, eating a graham cracker. I am sitting at the table next to her.

Charlotte: Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama? Mama?

Me: Yes, baby. What is it?

Charlotte: Cahcuh (cracker).

Me: Yeah, a cracker! You're eating a cracker.

[Pause]

Charlotte: Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama?

Me: What is it, honey?

Charlotte: Mama! Moh cahcuh?

Me: You want more? Okay, just a sec.

I get her another graham cracker from the package. There is a short pause.

Charlotte: Mama! Mama! Mama!

Me: Yes, honey?

Charlotte: CAHCUH! (She hurls the cracker to the ground.) MOH! Moh, mama!

Me: I don't think so. Your mama's not that dumb.

End scene.

Right now, she's busy transporting her shoes from one room to another. Sometimes she takes them one at a time. The next trip they'll travel as a pair. She's narrating the whole thing in baby gibberish like she's the host of her own show, some HGTV do-it-yourself thing about shoe moving.

She's spent the whole day searching for Jeff, who is out of town doing this. Every room we go into, she'll look around, saying "Dada? Dada?" Having exhausted all the other options, she opened the cabinet under the bathroom sink a little while ago, stuck her head in, and said "dada?"

This is ridiculous...

I was just checking my class lists for the fall. Every quarter I hope against hope that I won't have any duplicate names in my roster. I think I've had at least one pair in every class...two Rachels, two Megans, two Ryans, two Jasons...

This time takes the cake. In my two sections of 151, I have 5 (FIVE!) Chelseas.

Couch naps RULE!

Right now, because Charlotte's doing this:

I'm able to post this:

Charlotte's first bike ride!

Yesterday, following an afternoon spent purchasing, and then struggling to assemble and install Charlotte's new bike seat, my friend Kristin and I took her out for her first ride. Although she wasn't too excited about her helmet ("Hat...NO!" she said), she eventually got used to it and spent the ride saying "wheee!" and "whoa! whoa!", the latter when I was no doubt cornering too fast.

I've missed riding my bike, and now I look forward to being able to do so more often, particularly with the bike path just a block from our apartment.

I apologize about the dearth of posts around here lately. I got the great news yesterday that my master's essay was accepted and I'll be able to graduate this summer. This frees me up to work on a number of other things that I've been putting off for...well, for months, to be honest. Including a one-year video montage of Charlotte's first year that I hope to post here before the week's out.

In Charlotte news, she's back on her feet, walking like she'd never even heard of stairs. Speaking of stairs, she's kind of obsessed with them these days. I taught her how to back down the stairs today in the hopes that we won't always have to trail her up the steps only to bring her back down to start over again.

In Jeff and Jana news, we had our first date in about seven months Friday night, thanks to my friend Kristen who generously volunteered to babysit. Jeff and I headed out to a restaurant we'd been wanting to check out, and afterward even got to go get fancypants drinks at Casa. Like real grown-ups! Things went well at home, too. The only meltdown was when Kristen didn't understand Charlotte's request for "cahcah." Cahcah=cracker. And also our last name, interestingly.

So, look for more entries (with photos!) and even a video later this week.

Done!

I just emailed my master's essay draft off to my director. Although I thoroughly expect to receive several pages of suggested changes in return, I am celebrating nonetheless.

Final tally: 31 pages (in Times New Roman), 42 pages (Courier New). My works cited list is almost three pages.

Tumble in the Bronx

I'm happy to report that Charlotte seems a bit better today...more confident on her feet and walking a little closer to normal. I called the doctor and she said to take it day by day. If Charlotte's not back to normal within two weeks, we should follow up.

One thing that this spill has brought about is hearing everyone's stories about their own or their kids' tumbles. It is amazing what kids can bounce back from! It seems like everybody and their brother has fallen down stairs, off porches, out of car seats, etc. at one point or another, and all of them are walking without the assistance of canes or crutches at this point! Good thing babies are 90% cartilage.*

*not an actual percentage

Yes! Michigan

We spent our long weekend in Michigan visiting Jeff's family and some friends. Overall we had a great time. In truly un-Grand Rapidian fashion, the weather was full-on sunny almost every day and actually hot. We spent a lot of time outside with Charlotte, playing in Grandpa and Grandma's yard.

I wanted to write a post about Charlotte's lakeshore adventures, and how much she loved the water, how she strained against my grip, trying to run into the waves. I wanted to write about how she learned so many new words this weekend (uncle, walk, and Mindi among them). I wanted to write about how she now requests to "walk" everywhere, holding the hands of one or two people as she barrels ahead.

But I have to admit to being totally preoccupied with my concerns about Charlotte's recent injury, too much so to take the time to do any of those topics justice. In brief, Charlotte and Jeff took a tumble down the stairs yesterday. Charlotte is mysteriously injured, or uninjured and just traumatized...we can't tell. She seemed to have hurt her left foot. She didn't want to walk, and would scream and cry when she put weight on her feet. She briefly had a bruise on the sole of her foot. Now there's no bruise, no swelling, no visible evidence of injury, but she's not walking normally. She doesn't want to stand up. She kind of drags her feet.

We went to the doctor today, but didn't really get any answers. We can go for an x-ray if we want. I don' t know. I really hope we wake up tomorrow and she's back to normal again.

One of my greatest fears as a parent is that something will happen to my daughter. I try not to think too much about all the terrible things that could go wrong on a daily basis, of the bugs she could catch or the tumbles she could take or the bad people lurking, waiting to hurt her. To have something like this happen makes it more difficult for me to keep these fears at bay.

It's hard to think about much else when my mind is preoccupied with (probably needless) worrying. I hope it's needless. I really do.

This One's Broken!

Charlotte loves to play on our bed. She'll flop around, lean back on the pillows, smile and laugh. Yesterday when I was at school, Jeff was letting Charlotte crawl around our bed (closely supervised, of course...our bed's really high off the floor).

She crawled over to the foot of the bed, where she was sitting up, smacking the mattress and saying, "Nuh! Nuh!"

When Charlotte wants to nurse, she taps my chest and says "Nuh!"

As she continued to hit the bed and shout, Jeff leaned over to see what was going on. Lying on top of the covers was one of my bras.

Lucky Thirteen

Today is Charlotte's 13-month birthday, as well as my friend Mindi's 348-month birthday. (Happy birthday, Min!) I have to say that this last month has been TOTALLY AWESOME and I am not in any way exaggerating. Carla on the television show Scrubs said about having a baby: "Dr. Cox says it's like having a dog that slowly learns how to talk." And that's true, except that Charlotte would never jump up on you and hardly sheds. But the talking! It's amazing!

For example: when I get up in the morning in response to Charlotte's groaning siren call over the baby monitor, I'm usually pretty tired still. Sometimes I am a bit, shall we say, crabby? Not terribly chipper at any rate. But when I walk into her room these days, she usually greets me with a high-pitched, breathy "Hiiiii!" Lately she's also been saying "Morning!" in response to my good morning greetings. It sounds a bit like "Mooooheee," but I get the picture.

In addition to Charlotte's effusive greetings, her repertoire of animal sounds, her exclamations (uh-oh, oh dada, ooooh wow, among them) and her attempts to repeat what Jeff and I say. But she's more than just mimicking--she's actually learning that words mean things. "Haaa-tuh" she'll utter whenever she catches sight of one of the dozens of baseball caps Jeff has scattered around the house. "Aapuh" is her word for any vaguely apple-ish fruit. And an "ehbuh" is found in the middle of your arm while "neeeeee"s take up residence mid-leg. We're still working on "aaah-pituh," the less polite name for underarm.

When Charlotte isn't I.D.ing body parts, she's calling out the gender of the various children we meet. Whether you're a "guhl" or a "boooiuh," Charlotte will make a determination and announce it when ready.

She loves music. She loves to dance. She reads books to herself in her crazy, sing-songy baby language. She plays with her toys. She plays! Just a year ago we were applauding her first real smile. Now I see that wide, toothy grin every day as she expresses her general excitement over this amazing world she has to discover.

Happy 13-month birthday, Charlotte!

Should I be concerned?

For the last few quarters, I've closed out whatever course I was teaching with a pizza party for my students. The last couple of times, I've also invited Jeff and Charlotte to attend. And by "invited," I mean, "strongly encouraged." Okay, "forced." I enjoyed allowing my students to see my non-academic side, and, of course, to meet my adorable daughter and almost as cute husband. (Sorry Jeff).

Today was the last day of class for the summer session I taught. Charlotte really turned on the charm, happily demonstrating all of her animal sounds (which include monkey, crocodile, elephant, and a very gentle tiger) and she even ate a little pizza. While my students were writing their final journal entry, I was helping Charlotte walk through the room. She took a circuitous course, wanting to visit each and every student. As we wove our way back to the front, she paused by one student's desk, looked directly at him, and said, "Hiii, baby!"

Double-Video Monday!

Two new Charlotte videos up at youtube. The first one features Charlotte rocking out. The second is all about walking.

Enjoy!

Summer Fun

I'm taking a brief break from my Spanish homework (which takes, on average, three hours every night). So I thought I'd share a recent photo of Charlotte enjoying the baby pool and her Swimways luxury baby liner (not its real name). We've gotten to the pool at least once a week since summer began, and she really loves it. I think it's appropriate that her first word was "duck" because she's taken to the pool like a duck to...well, to water.

Today the temperature topped out at 95 degrees. The air conditioning in Ellis Hall (where my office and classroom are) was on the fritz, so my classroom was also approximately 95 degrees. Not too conducive to persuading juniors to discuss rhetorical strategies. A trip to the pool was just what the doctor ordered.

Relaxing in the shallow end of the baby pool while Charlotte motored around, bumping her little boat up against random strangers (she's very social), I realized that my summer is almost halfway over. I'd better enjoy this summer fun while it lasts.

The Simpselaars

Our family as Simpsons characters. Why are my arms so short? I don't know. I also don't know why I'm wearing mom jeans.

And another...

Charlotte goes for a walk. Watch it here.

Charlotte's Birthday: Cupcake Destruction!

Watch it here.

Charlotte's Birthday

Charlotte's first birthday party yesterday was a big success. I'll upload video later, but here are a few pictures of the festivities:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/33138142@N00/f7299N

One Year

June 23, 2006

June 23, 2007

Happy birthday, baby girl.

She walks!



Yesterday, while I was in school, Charlotte stood up in the middle of the floor and took two steps toward Jeff.

We've entered a whole new world of mobility here. Be afraid...be very afraid.


(Oh, and the photo has nothing to do with walking...I just couldn't resist posting it. It's one of her new favorite things to do.)