Twenty-Two Months

This month June learned the difference between "I want" and "I need." Needless to say, she has needed everything since then.

She has become a stairs dynamo. Adam can relax about it, I still jump to help her. She can do it herself though, both up and down.

She talks like crazy. She is really fun to listen to when she wants to imitate barn yard animals. She has the sounds and the animal names down pat and gets louder and louder as she makes the sounds.

She counts to three.

Music class is going really well. Afterwards June often sings the songs to herself, like "hot cross buns, umabenny, twoabenny, hot cross buns."

She is getting more and more into imaginative play. Often in the evenings we play horsey. She rides on our backs and then we dump her onto the couch. She adores it.

She loves the distinction between pajamas and regular clothes. She announces each thing she is doing, "I am drawing." "I am walking." "I am putting on my shoes." This morning she yelled insistently that she wanted some baba. We're talking full on sentences, all the time.

She has a preference for skirts and dresses, but I think it is more for comfort than anything else. And sometimes, to look like mommy.

We went to the grocery store last weekend and she was striding around with her yellow sunglasses on. This one older guy with grandkids of his own was smitten with her. He kept calling her a rock star. Adam told the woman at the checkout counter, "this happens everywhere we go." And it is true. June quickly develops her own entourage.

Sleep is largely the same, beginning nights in her little bed and ending them with us. She nurses less, and the boobies are often off-limits.

She feeds herself, though messily of course. But she loves to help clean up, so maybe it balances out. Specifically, she loves throwing things in the trash or the recycling. She also loves wiping things off with a baby wipe.

And she gives great hugs. Big strong ones that make you feel special.

We love you June!

June's apple

I'm pretty sure Melissa posted a similar photo one time on the Wild Nursling, but I could not resist sharing this. I also like this lower photo, something soft about it and the downcast turn to June's eyes. It is a peaceful moment.

Support Obama. Do this meme.

Good Night Boobies

Ahem.

I could not resist the title. Just this moment I can see a sweet little bird perched in the juniper tree outside my window. It is a treat. I think he is looking at me. I tried to take a picture but my movement made him fly away.

What I sat down to write about was last night's breakthrough. It was time. For a week or two Miss J has been napping in her toddler bed. I pushed it up to our bed as you see in the picture so that she can be closer and more easily climb into our bed if need be. Also, during the night, I first get her to sleep in her toddler bed. She inevitably wakes sometime, usually before midnight, and climbs into bed with us. Even just an hour or two of reclaiming the bed for ourselves has been lovely. But I still didn't cut off night nursing. I haven't ever had the heart to.

Then Monday night was a rough one. I finally had enough.
So I came up with this plan. Last night in the middle of the night, I let June nurse when she woke first and climbed into bed with us. After that when she awoke and requested boobies, the boobies had gone "night night" and she was out of luck.

Amazingly, surprisingly, she did not protest much and went straight back to sleep. She did wake up really early and wanted to nurse again - around 5:15, but thankfully not every 45 minutes wanting to nurse as she had the night before.

She has become a lot more demanding and with that I feel she has achieved another level of comprehension. It made me feel she was ready for this next step. Heck, if she can tell me to "Move!" in the middle of the night and indicate which boobie she prefers, she is ready to be talked to about letting everyone sleep better.

Soon, I hope, she will no longer need (or desperately want) to nurse to sleep at all.
I'm not cutting off nursing altogether. Just limiting it. And I think it is a nice balance.

P.S. I got the idea from Dr. Sears' article, 12 Alternatives for the All Night Nurser. I had read this article before and tried different techniques, but I think this is a keeper.

Perfect Pitch?

June was at a diner yesterday with my mom. It is not a particularly large restaurant, but it is popular and was full. June was talking as she does, pointing at the photographs of animals and naming them and making their sounds. She was also singing with her Nana. A woman in the restaurant stood up and asked the whole place, "Who is that child with the perfect pitch?" I guess June was not the only child in the restaurant, but she is the one the lady sought. Apparently this woman (I wish I knew her name) teaches music and plays a number of musical instruments. She has children and she said they never had perfect pitch. She went on and on marveling over June and her abilities and told my mom we had to nurture this ability. She couldn't believe how young June was. She predicted the way June doesn't like noisy things like the dishwasher, washing machine, lawnmowers. In fact, June always points at them and declares Noisy! She said that children with perfect pitch dislike any sounds that are not melodic. The woman was fairly certain June could be a musical genius and that we had to keep providing her with appropriate stimulus.

Does anyone know anything about nurturing musical ability? Is there anything we should do? (Maybe she should go visit Rene some more.) In honor of it all, here is an 8-second clip of Junie singing. The camera battery kept dying as I tried to film it, which is why it cuts off so abruptly.

Another reason that I find this interesting is that my paternal grandfather, John Humphrey, was an inventor. One of his inventions (from the 1960s or so) was a voice mirror which was designed to teach children perfect pitch. I've looked all over the internet and cannot find it, but if I can I will look through some of my old photographs for a picture of my grandfather with his inventions. You know the number font on all credit cards? My grandfather designed that. The design was to enable clearly seeing the numbers of the cards after being transferred through carbon paper. As far as I understand, he invented the original credit card machine, the old fashioned one you sometimes still see today. I want to investigate it further because I know he was part of a design team and I wonder what individual elements he created, such as the font. My dad tells me that when my grandfather died he was working on the design of ATM machines. I wish I had a chance to know him better. He died when I was thirteen years old.

June Days :: 22

June and her Dad.

They are sleeping right now. For fifteen minutes I sat poised in the living room, not making a sound. Not doing anything. Listening to June cry and call for me for about two minutes. She kept up for about five total. Then it went quiet. About ten minutes in she cried for me again. It has been silent now for about ten minutes. This is a good thing, yet it is so hard for me to stay out of it. I consciously back up and leave room for Adam to parent quite often. And he is a wonderful, loving parent.

When I first started this blog I posted about "before becoming a parent" a few times. (See here and here and here.) I know motherhood changed me a lot and in unexpected ways. Often I wonder if I will ever be how I was before. I also wonder if I want to be. We are so thoroughly a family now and a couple no longer. I suppose that is another subject though - the loss of "just the two of us." For now the loss I am feeling is the loss of control, the letting go of a chapter. You see, since about last August I have been the exclusive put-June-to-sleep parent. And June is still nursing. I know I would like to sleep better. I know I sometimes want nursing to be over with... but I think 55% of me is unsure where that will leave me as a parent. Sure, I'll still be mommy. But so far, this mommy has nursed. And nursing soothes many woes.

If parenting has taught me anything it has been patience. And now it is teaching me acceptance of change. And how to let go of control. Damn it's hard.

For a long time now June has been very attached to me, almost exclusively so. And while sometimes it gets old, I have just loved it. How could anyone not enjoy being the recipient of so much love?

How do you win the war between the desires to hold on and let go at the same time?

[It is funny, I have been blogging and checking blogs and before I published this I found that Tucson Mama is thinking about this topic as well. See here.]

June Days :: 14

Thank goodness for balloons in the airport.


Miss J. loves balloons. We drive by a car lot in Tucson pretty regularly, and it has these long columns of balloons that I never noticed until recently. This is because June sees them, and when she does, she waves all her arms and legs and shouts, "balloons!"

It is pretty amazing to see how excited she can get.

June Days :: 11

First introduction to piano, via my dear friend Rene.

This is June's 18 month old birthday. I can't believe it.

This month is the month of imagination. Of patting dollies to sleep with blankets on their backs. Of flushing the toilet. Of wiping her nose and saying "booger." Of wiping our noses. Of falling hard in love with play, especially when that means running around a playground with other kids. Of trying on hats or headbands or really just any type of clothes and saying, "Pretty. Mirror." Always in a singsong voice. And then demanding instant access to the mirror. Of not wanting to be carried much anymore. Of maintaining the sense of humor we all know and love with new games all the time and new ways to make us laugh. Of, can it be, a little shift away from being such a mama's girl? Daddy is getting lots of attention lately.

Little June, we love you.

Lessons in Staying Awake, by June

June has some brilliant techniques for avoiding falling asleep. Often she uses the entire repertoire each night. Unfortunately for June, though Mom loves June's sense of humor and likes encouraging it, she's reverted to not responding to any of the techniques, so they are falling back out of favor. Hopefully this list will help her remember in future years.

(1) Kick legs into bed, hard and fast, making bed shake in process.
(2) Climb onto and straddle either Mom or Dad, then, when positioned over adult belly, declare, "bouncy bouncy bouncy" and start to bounce. Giggle a lot.
(3) Look for Mommy's panza (belly). Look for Junie's panza. Look for the button.
(4) List off every body part you know, from head to toe.
(5) Start blowing raspberries when you should be nursing. Giggle a lot. But even more important, make Mommy laugh.
(6) Snap awake suddenly at the sound of the dog barking. Say, "woof woof." Look around bewildered. Say "barking." "Doggy."
(7) See the (!@#%) cat enter the room meowing. Repeat steps of (6) but the kitty version. Cry a little when mom shoves the cat off the bed.
(8) If you can get away with it, jump on the bed. Or just attempt to stand and then drop quickly onto your butt.
(9) Pat yourself on the butt to show Mommy how you go night-night.
(10) Ask for water. Cry for water. Do the same for Daddy.

Luckily, all these techniques are for pre-sleep. June doesn't use them in the middle of the night unless she REALLY woke up. Usually she just cries out either for mommy or "miuu" and then dozes back off.

This Morning ::

This morning the little girl in the bed said, "No!" and batted her arms at me,
when upon her waking I asked her for a hug.

She then declined to join her parents in the living room,
opting instead to read quietly in the bedroom for awhile.

She had a little fit when her dad lifted her away from her birdy treehouse
for a poopy diaper change.

Her mother thinks she concealed her momentary disappointment at being denied a hug fairly well. But surely the girl could tell that Mom's informing her, "June, your parents are in the living room. We would love it if you would come out here,"
was a sadly veiled attempt at getting some attention.

Who is this girl and what has she done with my baby???

(But my, isn't she beautiful?)

Note: Okay I admit it, it is terribly hard for me to tear myself away from blogging. So here I am, but I still can't promise the level of frequency I *want* to be writing at...