Aside from the failure of IndyMac Bancorp, a study that finds many coral species are threatened with extinction, and the tarnishing of a national legacy due to family infighting, that is.
Claire is ten months and three days old.
There’s a cute video on my Flickr account if you want to watch her personal triumph. What an exhilarating day!
The humidity is cloying right now, and already it’s 74 degrees. I am hunkered down, mentally geared for another 100+ degree day cooped up in this non-air conditioned house with the windows and drapes closed to retain last night’s cool air. It reminds me of the northern winters I grew up in.
Oh, we will go out to the park in the morning, briefly, and a friend invited us to enjoy her air-conditioning yesterday. We have a repeat invitation for that today. Of course, this requires driving on an ozone action day, which contributes to more pollution — ozone, smog, carbon dioxide, and smoke from fires.
And sweet Claire is more active than ever! Though her naps have been less deep the last few days, probably due to heat. So she gets fretful as well.
So, I’m not much in the mood to write. If you’ve written me an email recently (within the last couple weeks), I haven’t replied because I had company, and now I have little time when Claire is awake, and it’s just damn hot and I’m tired. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. 🙂
Wherever you are, Reader, I hope you are comfortable.
Aunt LR has left. It was a wonderful week. She and Claire enjoyed each other immensely, and I’m feeling sad at my sister’s departure. There will be other visits, though, and I’m going to focus on how fun this one was.
One thing I’ve noticed about having a child is that one parent typically takes the majority of the pictures, which means more time spent behind the lens than in front. That would be me. My sister intends today to get some shots of me with Claire. This was one from the early morning. I look pretty perky for 7 a.m.! (Claire and I arose at 6:10.)
When Stella wearies of being chased, she runs up the stairs to sit in safety and observe Claire. Claire, in turn, stands at the bottom trying to coax the cat to return. Today, after pleading with Stella awhile, the Little Miss put her right knee on the bottom step and pulled up! I have a video of it. It’s uploading to Flickr (providing Flickr can process it). Here’s a photo of this huge milestone. This means that the gate will now be closed unless Claire is watched like a hawk.
Today Claire is 9 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days old. In the past two weeks she progressed from pulling up to climbing up. How quickly things change.
This is a bragging post (but without words). Just one question: What did I do to end up with this amazing beautiful little person?
The question points to the fact that life is random, and I really can’t take credit for any of this. I have the great privilege to be entrusted with this gift.
I made Claire’s hat and trusted the pattern. It’s very cute!
The model is also quite charming and cute.
It was love at first sight.
After a couple of months doing the “all done” sign with Claire, she recently started making the sign when I initiated — for example, after a meal, when I’d ask “All done?” and make the sign, she’d confirm it. But yesterday, she initiated the sign! When she was full, she raised her small hands and made the sign her way, smiling at me. She also made the sign when she was in the exer-saucer and wanted to get out. Wow. I can see her brain growing.
The other thing that brings me joy is the fact that it is possible to travel 3,000 miles across country within half a day. Think of this astonishing fact. It’s almost like time travel. My sister arrives in about 2.5 hours; her journey started in central New York this morning. We’re so excited about her visit!
Cooler weather is on the way, so I’ve decided to make Claire a winter hat. I’m trying to experiment more, and I found a pattern called a Ball-Band Toddler Hat. I used a larger needle to get the gauge right and the darn thing came out too large for her. It’s a bit small for an adult, but it would fit an older (grade-school age) child. The bigger needle also obscured the stitches a bit — they’re not as defined. This first attempt was on Cascade 220, a plain wool yarn; I’ll donate it to a charity. The hat for Claire will be on a different yarn, now that I know what I’m doing.
Outside the air quality suffers. The haze is thick, the scent is acrid. Smoke is visible at about a half-mile. It’s very odd, as the sun shines through, the sky is gray-white, and the horizon is obliterated. There are about 800 wildfires burning in Northern California (last I heard). So we aren’t going on many walks or park dates at this time.
Inside, Claire continues to charm, amuse, and endear herself to us. When I read her Sandra Boynton’s A to Z book and get to the “K, Kangaroo Kissing,” she makes the kiss noise. She crawls around holding onto a small toy or sock with one hand. Sometimes she tries holding something in both while crawling and pulling up and finds this challenging. She is pulling up on everything and terrorizing the cat. I think the fourth upper tooth is finally breaking through. She chews clothes, toys, fingers. Claire feeds herself Cheerios now with good dexterity. She is all-around wonderful!
Her aunt LR arrives on Sunday for a week. We’re looking forward to lots of bonding.
Also, recent firsts:
I have 45 minutes to write this, so we’ll see what pours out.
Today
I have a beautiful nine-month-old daughter who is pulling up and longs to stand by herself. She is starting to cruise. She’s becoming more aware and more of a little individual daily. Today I am physically and mentally healthy. Today I am in a secure, strong, happy marriage. Today I am able to stay home to raise my daughter, while Husband works at a good company at a job he enjoys. Today dinner will be a hefty ribeye steak with corn on the cob and a nice Syrah, followed by Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream for dessert. I am loved and enjoy a beautiful life. I feel I have found my life’s calling in motherhood. I didn’t realize this was the case, that this is what my heart longed for all along, until Claire arrived.
2003 – 5 Years Ago
On this day, I was in Syracuse visiting my parents and one of my sisters celebrating my 40th birthday. It was a lovely visit, and I felt much joy at turning 40. I resided in Austin, living with but not yet married to Husband. I had earned my certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor and, having “paid my dues” working in community mental health, I had a growing private practice. I had been blogging for one year, and in 2003 I learned a very painful lesson about what was appropriate for blogging. The lesson cost me three friendships and some deep family heartache. On the other hand, I was blessed by many friends via the Internet because of this new type of social expression and connection.
1998 – 10 Years Ago
I was attending graduate school full-time and working full-time at UT Austin. On this day that year I was arranging to get my navel pierced and deciding what my first tattoo would be. I was battling a serious bout of major depression triggered by a number of factors (working through the aftermath of a sexual assault that happened in 1994, grief over the untimely death of an animal companion, a romantic relationship gone bad with someone I worked with daily, the loss of community upon leaving a fundamentalist religion, a potentially violent scary neighbor upstairs who kept me up all night) — all of which compounded a physical disposition toward depression. (In other words, it runs in my family genes.) I was riddled with self-doubt and fear; I fought a compulsion to injure myself with sharp objects. I started Vipassana meditation this year, and this helped. Much later in the year I tried anti-depressants for the first time, and they catalyzed a dramatic improvement in my well-being.
1993 – 15 Years Ago
On this day I celebrated with friends. Co-workers bought me roses, cake, and funny balloons. On my 30th birthday I embraced a new decade. My twenties had been difficult, shrouded with depression, financial problems, confusion about my identity, and trouble becoming mentally emancipated from family dynamics. I had finally completed my bachelor’s degree at SUNY Oswego after ten arduous years. I was dreaming about a new life, which I brought about for myself in 1994 by moving to Austin, Texas.
1988 – 20 Years Ago
I had moved home briefly to live with my parents after ending a five-year relationship, because I was deeply in debt. I worked two jobs to get out of debt and save money so I could attend college full-time in 1989. I agonized over my age; every birthday in my twenties was an occasion to lambast myself for not having accomplished anything with my life. I felt time was escaping me and I was afraid.
1983 – 25 Years Ago
I was attending a business institute for secretarial studies (which I hated, but it was an act of desperation so I could become employable and independent). I worked part-time, rented a room from my parents until the end of the year. In December I moved to a room at the Mizpah tower in downtown Syracuse, a low-cost residence for women. It was a heady time, living on my own at last. I declared my sexual orientation as lesbian. I met a woman who became my companion and partner for five years.
1978 – 30 Years Ago
I was a fundamentalist born-again Catholic struggling to feel some self-worth. I was a loner in high school and had one close friend. I had poor self-esteem and felt hopeless most of the time. This was the onset of minor depression. I began writing journals in earnest.
1973 – 35 Years Ago
I was lost in a family storm. I won’t provide details out of respect for the privacy of family members.
1968 – 40 Years Ago
I was a cute little kindergartner who adored my stuffed animals and was terrified of thunderstorms. That was the year of social craziness with RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated, plus the Tet offensive in Vietnam. I have an image from television news branded into my memory of an injured soldier with his brains outside his head on the ground. (It haunted me. What the hell were newscasters thinking?)
1963 – 45 Years Ago
I came into this world at 3:47 a.m., which explains why I’ve always been a night owl.
Life for me improved over the years. I’m aging well. 🙂 I’ve received many sweet cards and gifts today. I thought I’d share a chuckle from my brother.
I’ve discovered a new blog and resource portal that will become a staple of my reading: The New Homemaker. I was doing research on the origin of “Susie Homemaker” (which I’ve not yet found because I wandered off into this new discovery). From the About page:
Who is the New Homemaker? She is the person who has discovered that having both partners in the work world is not “having it all.” Children, elders and the community have been sacrificed for two generations to the crazy notion that households can run themselves. Well, they can’t, and never have. Working parents have struggled valiantly to “have it all,” but are increasingly saying “we’ve had enough”; someone has to be home. Even single parents are exploring ways to spend more time at home and less at work, or to work at home.
Unexpectedly at home, the New Homemaker now finds herself completely unprepared to run that household, with few resources to turn to. Skills and knowledge housekeepers took for granted for centuries have been lost in just 50 years’ time. Traditional women’s magazines are filled not with solid homemaking advice and resources, but with diets, celebrity interviews, horoscopes, romance quizzes, career advice, fashion spreads and the like. Where help is available it’s frequently packaged with religious advice that may be appropriate for some women but hardly all, or even most.
I could print the entire manifesto here, but I won’t. You should read it, however. It speaks sense.
Claire started pulling up this week, and yesterday she began cruising a little too. Today she pulled herself up under the dining table, and I had the camera handy. A few moments later she began to whimper, because she couldn’t figure out how to sit down again. In other places she lets go and sits down, but here she must have felt caged, or that it wasn’t safe to do that (and with the chair nearby she’s right). So I helped her.
I am her personal jungle gym. She’s changing so rapidly. The exer-saucer is passé now.