My little sweet pea is sick again (since Friday) with another cold and/or a reaction to the vaccines. No fever. We’ve been giving her extra TLC.
And guess what? I made art! I made a collage last night. It’s a gift for someone who reads the blog, so I won’t post a photo of it until after I know it’s been received.
I received an email this morning announcing a study. I participated. Here’s the information:
ATTENTION BLOGGERS!
I am a doctoral student in Communication Studies at Kent State University. For my doctoral dissertation, I am studying bloggers. Would you be willing to participate in my survey?
This online survey should only take about 15 minutes to complete, and it would mean the world to me. If you participate, you will be entered in a drawing to win one of ten $20 Amazon.com gift cards.
To participate in this study, you must be at least 18 years old, and you must currently maintain a blog that is primarily about your personal musings about your life, internal states, opinions, thoughts, or attitudes. Finally, you must write in your blog at least once a month.
If you would like to participate, please visit the following website: Survey Monkey.
Thanks so much for your help!
Sincerely,
Erin E. Kleman
Doctoral Candidate
School of Communication Studies
Kent State University
eekleman@kent.edu
Claire had her six-month check-up yesterday. On her last visit she was 12 pounds, 8 ounces and 24.5 inches tall. She is now 14 pounds, 6 ounces (at last, a little more than twice her birth weight!) and 26 inches tall. If she’d been born in Austin, we’d say she’s got the makings of a long, tall Texan. She is gaining weight, but since she’s also growing longer more rapidly (it seems), she keeps dropping in the weight/length ratio percentiles. Now she fits the 5th percentile (actually a bit less, 4.94%). But she is healthy!
The doctor put her in a sitting position, and Claire was a little wobbly but stayed up. The doctor thinks she’ll be sitting independently in another week or two. Claire recognized the doctor’s office and started to cry once we were in the examination room. I suppose she remembers what happened her last visit — the dreaded shots, which she got again. She cried this time too, but quickly stopped when we showed her the baby in the mirror. 🙂
Claire is fascinated with everything. She tried to grab the doctor’s stethoscope. When the doctor examined her ears, she kept moving her head to see what was being stuck in her head. She babbled up a storm; the doctor said she’ll probably start talking soon. I asked for clarification, and she meant that Claire will be attempting to intentionally make sounds similar to the thing associated with it, such as “mah” for “milk.”
Because Claire is rolling both ways and almost sitting independently, the doctor said it was okay to put a blanket in her crib. I’ve been using a cuddly blanket and stroking her face while I hold her during naps. My hope is that she’ll have associated the blanket with comfort and that it will provide this when we transition to napping in the crib. I still don’t have the gumption to try again yet. I really do cherish holding her. I’m relying on my intuition to tell me when to attempt another time.
The doctor also said Claire can start solids. We gave her the first serving of rice cereal this morning. That stuff tastes like paste, by the way. (Yes, I sampled it.) Awful, bland. But that’s what is recommended. She ate some. I took a couple photos and made a little movie for posterity. She didn’t spit it out, and she willingly opened her mouth for it. Since I made it with formula, and it was practically liquid, I suppose it tasted familiar.
As far as anniversaries go, it was a quiet one. We did give ourselves the gift of a new mini stereo for the downstairs area. We play a lot of music for Claire, and we needed something high enough to keep from her little hands. The old boom box was moved to our bedroom. (I fall asleep to the sound of waves.)
Yesterday afternoon we went to the park, and Claire sampled her new sand toys. (The playgrounds have giant sand play areas, but she’s too young yet to play in it.) Here’s another photo.
And since I’ve been posting so many photos of her lately, I suppose I’ll take a few days off from blogging here and give my readers a break.
I helped make forty-eight centerpieces for an Easter/Spring event hosted by my Las Madres play group. The house was chaos (a friend hosted), full of kids and moms and craft supplies. We had fun! Claire was watching kids run around outside while I stuffed flowers into pots.
My daughter is seized by paroxysms of laughter by crinkly plastic grocery bags, tissue paper being scrunched, and wrapping paper being torn. There is nothing more amusing in the universe to her.
Makes me happy too!
Wow! Six months have passed. So has a lifetime, it sometimes seems.
So what is notable about Claire at six months of age?
Beautiful Claire, you’ve grown so much in just six months! I look forward to discovering more of the world with you over the next half a year and beyond.
I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
–Oscar Wilde
We want to provide Claire with a variety of musical exposure. The Music Together songs are an excellent start. We listen to a classical music radio station sometimes. And we have a huge collection of music on CD which is stored also on our computers. (Ain’t technology grand?) So I made seven CDs of music (no classical but pretty much everything else) to spice up every day life. We listen to regular rock stations too, but I like the idea of having personally created playlists for her. Husband made one for her the night we returned from the hospital; it’s called Claire Dance Mix. I haven’t listed that here, since it’s his compilation. If you’d like to see the (very long) list, you can see more. I’ll probably make more over time, since we have thousands of songs. (Ain’t technology grand?) Continue reading
It’s 9:36 p.m. as I begin writing this, and I still haven’t bathed today. I thought I might actually take a long soak, then wash my hair before bed tonight, but already it’s closing in on my bedtime (if I want to be decently energized tomorrow). Instead I spent the evening (from 7:00 until now) organizing photos.
The thing is, this mothering is intensive. It’s becoming more so as Claire grows more alert and interactive for longer periods. No sooner than I rise in the morning than it seems time to put her to bed, but my body aches from all the hours in between.
Today there was a meal at 5:30 and play until 6:45 a.m., then a nap until 8:30 a.m. (I hold her for all naps), then a meal and play until 11:30 a.m., then a nap until 1:00, then a walk to the park and swinging on the swing, then an attempted nap at 2:30 p.m. (plus more eating in there), then up at 3:00, playing and a crying jag (Claire’s) until we got out of the house for a walk in a different park from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., then picking up unhealthy food to go, eating dinner, then bathing Claire and putting her to bed by 7:15 p.m. She self-amuses briefly, but she really wants to be interacted with, so by “play” I mean either interacting with her and her toys & books, or involving her in watching me do a household task. Also, Husband does a lot of interacting on weekends with her.
The amount of time I have to spend on the computer is incrementally decreasing each week, so there is no point having it on the coffee table in the living room. Also, because the cat destroyed nearly all my laptop cords, and because Claire’s little hands will soon be over everything, my laptop will now live in the office. A logical place, eh? I feel a distance developing between me and the Internet. There just isn’t much time anymore, not if I want to spend my few precious hours doing other things for myself as well.
There was a point before Claire was born that I wondered if I would be able to sever the addiction I had to my computer and the web. Would I rise to the occasion? The answer is clear. I am constitutionally incapable of choosing the computer over my daughter. I’ll still use the computer, but it will have to be squeezed in among the many other pursuits — reading a book, knitting (which I haven’t done in ages), exercising, etc. Wow, imagine that. I’m actually living! In the real world. In the here and now. More often, at least.
I’ll still read my favorite blogs, and I’ll still post. And a lot of my play group communications are via email, so I’m not going Luddite on you. Just don’t worry if you don’t see much activity ’round here. I can also always be reached by email.
This meme has been making the rounds. I’m not certain how I feel about the relevance of posting three sentences from a nearby book (and skipping the five preceding sentences), but what the heck.
I’ve been tagged by The Friendly Humanist for a new blog meme. Here are the rules:
The book nearest me with at least 123 pages is a book I’ve had in queue for at least 10 years. I pulled it off the shelf the other day to think about reading it (so little time, so many books). Here are the sentences:
R’tu enabled the sisterly cooperation and dietary control women needed to successfully bear larger-brained babies. R’tu braided the mental, physical, and spiritual together in ever-expanding spirals of cultural expression. We thus led ourselves along the course of our evolution by enacting consciousness.
This begs the question: What is R’tu?
It’s a Sanskrit word. If Wikipedia is correct, it means:
Ritu (?tú) in Vedic Sanskrit refers to a fixed or appointed time, especially the proper time for sacrifice (yajna) or ritual in Vedic Religion. The word is so used in the Rigveda, the Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda. In Classical Sanskrit, it refers to an epoch or period, especially one of the six seasons of the year, Vasanta “spring”, Grishma “the hot season”, Varsha “the rainy season”, Sharad “autumn”, Hemant “winter”; and Shishir “the cool season”, or the menstrual cycle.
This link doesn’t define it, but it gives a sense of the concept’s importance in Sanskrit literature.
The book I used for the meme is Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Here is how the author defines the term.
Ritual, fromt Sanskrit r’tu, is any act of magic toward a purpose. Rita, means a proper course. Ri, meaning birth, is the root of red, pronounced “reed” in Old English and still in some modern English accents (New Zealand). R’tu means menstrual, suggesting that ritual began as menstrual acts. The root of r’tu is in “arithmetic” and “rhythm”; I hear it also in “art,” “theater,” and perhaps in “root” as well. The Sanskrit term is still alive in India, where goddess worship continues to keep r’tu alive in its menstrual senses; r’tu also refers to special acts of heterosexual intercourse immediately following menstruation, and also to specific time of year.
This should be an interesting book. The author, Judy Grahn, is an American poet, was a member of the Gay Women’s Liberation Group, helped establish The Women’s Press Collective in 1969, and is co-director of the Women’s Spirituality MA program and Program Director of the MFA in Creative Inquiry at the New College of California.
As for tagging others, I’m copping out on this one. I barely have the energy to finish this post, and I’d like to eat dinner. Besides, I don’t want to wear out my welcome with friends and recently tagged five people for another meme. If you want to play along, feel free, and leave a comment.
Today was a Big Day. We went to the park, and Claire rode the bucket swing at the playground. She was thrilled. She grinned and flirted and giggled. She stared at the trees swaying in the wind. She watched other children run around. And then, I decided to see if she was big enough to sit in the stroller without being in the infant seat. And she was! So instead of facing me and looking up at the world, she faced away from me and got a whole new perspective.
I’m really pleased for her. It’s odd; I felt a little lonely pushing the stroller. Up until that point, I could always smile, coo, talk and sing, and she’d be engaged with me. The new position engaged her with the world. It’s a small reminder of the eventual direction her life will take, and it was poignant.
However, she isn’t through with me yet. I held her for two naps in the chair, and she fell asleep within three minutes each time. (I love watching her sink into sleep. She smacks her lips a little and turns her head toward me.) Then around 5 p.m. she got whiny; I pulled out the Moby wrap and she brightened. I put her in it and danced slowly to lullabies with her, and then she fell asleep against my chest.