Friday, December 31, 2010

The Quotable Annika

-- “Dinosaurs will bite you!” (a monthlong unit on dinosaurs at babyschool ... heh.)


-- “Hey -- that’s Grandpa’s!” (in re: the bottle of vodka I took out of the freezer while she was having her dinner; we rarely if ever have cocktails before she’s in bed, but the rule doesn’t apply to Grandpa -- and this was months after his last visit)


-- “enamames” (the little beans inside cooked green beans -- which she’s calling “edamame” when she strips them out to eat them separately, because that’s what those look like)


-- “Guys Building” is what she calls Holmes on Homes, a family favorite TV program in our house. She’ll say stuff like “Those guys built it wrong. Guys building fix it RIGHT!” and the other day, warned that she could break the crib rail if she kept kicking it like that, she countered “That’s OK, Mike Holmes will fix it.”


-- “Mommy’s Restaurant”: aka our kitchen and her high chair. It’s funny ... but arrgh.


-- “When I’m twenty, I can have a beer.” “I don’t like beer. I’m a too little girl.”


-- “Contaments” -- aka “continents,” which applies equally to states, countries, and actual continents; they’re doing a unit on this at babyschool.


-- “I’m really good at puzzles.” Damned if she isn’t, too -- it’s been kind of astonishing to see how good she is at putting together 50-piece puzzles by herself this holiday. I didn’t know she could do them before now!


-- “the haircut store” -- where you go to get a haircut, of course!

And a few things more ...

Random notes & whatnot from the life & times of Annika


--Reading: She loves to read and be read to, and now she’s reading to us (or to an imaginary audience, for whom she’ll “read” a page, then turn the book around and hold it up to the room like a teacher or librarian would). She always takes a book into her bed at naptime, which she’ll read out loud for awhile before conking out. She says of the chapter books she’s got (mostly Little House), “I don’t know all the words because I’m not bigger yet.” But it’s clear that she’s getting there -- she doesn’t like being put on the spot (“What does that word say?”) but she knows a LOT of them, and she can spell her own name without looking at it written down. A big thing right now is what “starts with” things, i.e. what letters various words start with -- and she’s good at it.


--Music: Like I said, she sings all day long (real songs, invented songs, mashups), she dances whenever she hears music, she talks all the time about what instruments she wants (e.g. she used to want a pink guitar -- now she wants a blue one -- and she wants to play piano), she recruits everyone around her into bands (“I play guitar. You play keyboards. Daddy play drums.”), she has her own special playlist that she wants to hear in the car (including, but not limited to):

  • Yakety Yak (the Coasters)
  • Charlie Brown (the Coasters)
  • That'll Be the Day (Beatles version)
  • Up Around the Bend (Creedence)
  • Pizza Pie (Norman Fox & The Rob Roys)
  • Be My Baby (Ronettes)
  • The Ballad of John and Yoko (Beatles)
  • In My Life (Beatles)
  • Got My Mind Set On You (George Harrison)
  • I Want You Back (Jackson Five)
  • Video Killed the Radio Star (Buggles)
  • Rock 'n Roll High School (Ramones)
  • Rockaway Beach (Ramones)
  • Don't Bring Me Down (ELO)
  • Take a Chance On Me (ABBA)
  • Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears)
  • Sam Cooke: Pretty much everything the man ever recorded. SERIOUSLY. The girl loves her some Sam Cooke.
  • Lot of Motown, including: Where Did Our Love Go, You Can't Hurry Love, Tears of a Clown, etc.
  • Stevie Wonder, including: For Once In My Life, Superstition, Isn't She Lovely
  • And a WHOLE BUNCH of doo-wop, including I Wonder Why (Dion & the Belmonts), Earth Angel (the Penguins), Get a Job, Rama Lama Ding Dong, Blue Moon, Duke of Earl



--Independence: She can dress and undress herself completely on her own now -- even gets the tags correctly in the back! It’s kind of amazing how quickly she caught on, and how thoroughly she mastered it in such a short time. And the trick she does to get her own coat on -- puts it down on the ground, shoves both arms in, and flips it over her head -- is hysterical to watch! (Learned, presumably, at babyschool -- and we make such a fuss over her doing it, that she doesn’t really want to do it unless we make her. heh.) We’re now completely done with sippy cups (except one we keep in the fridge, filled with water, for convenience on the go); it’s real cups only (and hilariously, she likes a top on her cup of milk at the coffee shop now -- “This is my coffee. PERTEND coffee. [blows on it] It’s very very hot.”). Also: no more diapers! First, she decided one day this spring that she wanted to go to babyschool without one, and that was that; there were maybe four accidents over the next couple of weeks (mostly due to her not wanting to quit whatever she was doing to go to the bathroom), then they sent all those extra shorts & undies home, declaring victory. Then she decided no more pullups at naptime at home -- never an accident there. Then, finally, just a couple of weeks ago, she said no more nighttime diapers -- “Underpants ONLY!” -- and darned if that hasn’t been the case. Yaaaaaaay!


--Dinner out: We now have quite high confidence in her as an early-evening dining companion -- we tried it a couple of times (and dinner went reaaally long the first time, out at Barolo with Mamalah), and it worked! Such stamina -- we’re impressed and really glad; it is so nice to be able to do that from time to time.


--Things outgrown: Her size 7 shoes, the blanket dots (too short; had to buy her a new fleece for bed & for babyschool), the first peg on her trike (R. has to move the seat back), baby toothpaste (we’re using a kids’ one with fluoride, which we’ve had to teach her not to swallow, and to rinse afterward), the pack ‘n play (we bought a new inflatable “big-girl travel bed” which she loves -- although now she HAS to sleep in our room, because there’s no containment at all and we can’t have her loose in the house away from home quite yet ...).


--Fun stuff: Going for a ride on the Ocean Walk on her trike, especially when Daddy accompanies her on her/his skateboard (it’s hers, but it’s a real one that will hold him -- though comically undersized for his height), helping Mommy in the kitchen, doing crafts, writing, pretending to mail stuff, singing all day long, playing games and watching videos of herself on her iPhone (R.‘s outmoded 1st-gen one, decommissioned from the phone & internet functions), going with me to Trader Joe’s (aka “Traderlader Joe’s”) on Sundays around 8:00 a.m. to do the week’s grocery shopping (they play good music, there are samples, and they have those little grocery carts for her; she knows to look for “organic”, and always remembers to ask for stickers at the checkout -- she’s such a good little helper!).


--Skills: Her coloring, painting, tracing and drawing skills are frickin AMAZING. She colors inside the lines, she can trace all her letters (and do a bunch on her own -- A, S, D, T, L, C, etc.), spell her own name without looking at it, draw stuff that really looks like what she means it to be (I saved this one Foofa she made -- it kills me). Surprises every day on this score.


--Math: I guess this started at babyschool, but we’re doing some stuff with addition and subtraction. Like, hold up five fingers and say, “What’s five plus one?” and count all of them to determine it’s six. Again, she doesn’t like being put on the spot, but she likes figuring it out.


--Obsession: Yo Gabba Gabba. It’s a kids’ TV show, featuring one human (DJ Lance Rock) and five nonhuman characters that live in a boombox, only to be animated when they go to Gabbaland. It has funny little bits, kids dancing and/or doing “Cool Tricks,” animations, new music by real bands, awesome lessons -- it’s as great as the old Sesame Street. We discovered it in ... what, February? March? and it grew into a major obsession -- good thing R. and I also love it or we might be going out of our minds by now. YGG shoes and Muno pillow for Christmas, YGG theme for her birthday party, YGG songs on eternal repeat in all of our brains ...


Games

--The naptime game: HUGE hit, this game. It involves taking every stuffed animal and toy and whatnot, finding them a pillow and a blanket (everything from a cardboard box to a washcloth or kleenex), and having them lie down on the floor & get covered up while she says “shhh” and pats them on the back. She will do this for HOURS if you let her. I remember doing much the same thing, especially at my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ houses, in kindergarten.


--Baseball: She loves to play baseball -- she’ll hunker down in a catcher’s stance and demand you throw her a ball, or she’ll run around the room hurling herself face- or knees-first at what she says is a base, or get you into “Sstrow ... catch! Sstrow ... catch!” anytime, anywhere.


--Literalness as a joke: One facet of her sense of humor ... for example, I told her to put her pants on, and she said OK, and I puttered around doing something else while I waited, then went to check -- and she had them on, all right. On her HEAD. She was dancing around laughing “I put my pants on, Mommy!!”


Month-by-month, May - November

MAY

--Mother’s Day: Daddy took the early shift, and she made a card, which she brought in to me in bed; she told me she was going to “giff you a kiss” and then we were going out for a “special meal.” SO CUTE!!! Special meal = brunch at Nona’s.


--Another trip to the zoo: The older she gets, the more fun the zoo is. Back in the day, she couldn’t really see many of the animals, and didn’t have the stamina to cover that much ground -- but this time, she really enjoyed herself, and we all got to ride the little steamer train and talk about polar bears and whatnot. Fun Memorial Day outing!


--Babyschool picnic: They invited all the parents for an end-of-school picnic and a slideshow of the year. Of course we didn’t talk to the other parents, just sat with our own kid, but she was SO psyched to have us both there, and it was a good time.




JUNE

--Father’s Day: This time, I took the early shift, and was the card helper. Our gifts included filling up the Prius’s gas tank, and picking up lunch from Westlake Joe’s.


--Housesitting for M&H in Scotts Valley: The A. family went on a two-plus-week trip, so we volunteered to spend as much time as we could at their place, swimming in their pool, grilling on their deck, taking walks on their acreage -- it was a real sacrifice, but we were up for it. Heh. This is where we hatched a plan to start eating dinner with Annika, instead of feeding her her own dinner and then eating ours after she was in bed ... it was a great plan when we were off work and had time to organize like that, but sadly, it lasted only a couple of days back in the real world. We’ll try again someday -- and meanwhile, these weekends were like resort vacations in the sun (away from our fog-bound chill at home). Awesome.




JULY

--The Fourth: Annika was happy to go with us to buy safe ‘n lame fireworks from the stands near our house, but wanted no part of the lighting of fuses and the getting away, so we saved that part for after she was in bed. Maybe next year!


--Crazy Hair Day: Babyschool had all sorts of awesome fun stuff all summer long (bouncy house, water play, crafty things, etc.), but one of the best was Crazy Hair Day, in which all the kids got their hair done and painted bright colors -- Annika’s was a flower (her hair in a bun, with the bun painted fluorescent pink and the rest bright green). It was HILARIOUS -- and there are many pictures & some video.




AUGUST

--Fridays off: My workplace declared, as a cost-saving measure, Fridays off in August -- which was awesome for us! We puttered around together, we did crafts, we just generally enjoyed ourselves. One of the Fridays, we went to Crown & Crumpet, this tea room in Ghirardelli Square in the city. She was so cute -- another customer, seated a couple of tables over with some girlfriends, told her table “That little girl should be in ads for this place.” Which about summed it up! (We went a few weeks later with Mamalah -- and she was awesome again!) Another of the free Fridays, we joined a babyschool field trip to Happy Hollow, an amusement park for little kids in San Jose. They have tamed-down rides, most of which she was juuuuust barely tall enough to ride; we did the carousel, the police/fire engine thing (a sort of merry-go-round thing where they get their own car -- I got a few seconds of that on iPhone video), and several other rides. We had lunch as a group, then all the other kids went back to babyschool and I took Annika home -- we were both wiped out, but it was a really fun day.


--Mamalah visits: Making sure to get a trip in before the beginning of school, Mamalah came out for a week or so in August. We did some stuff like going to the city (bookstore, Crown & Crumpet) and to a dinner at Barolo, but most of the time was just grandmother/grandbaby time -- really the best kind of time.


--A.& K. visit: We saw our friends A. and K. during that week; they were on their way to Kauai (at our instigation, mostly) on a “babymoon” (expecting their first baby in December), so we fetched them from the airport during their seven-hour layover from the east coast and took them to lunch in Half Moon Bay. We had a great time, and Annika was a model kid, soothing their fears about what Life With Kid would be like, which was really cool. :-)


--Clowntime in Clearlake: For H.’s 40th birthday, the Sauce crew and H.’s set of high-school girlfriends all went to a big old house in Clearlake for the weekend (the drive there was ... exciting, as it was directly through a wildfire in the mountains and involved helicopters flying overhead, dumping fire retardant pink stuff on the fire). The plan was for us all to dress as clowns on Saturday night for the party, and whoa -- that was hilarious! She was the only kid there, this tiny little thing in a clown costume, having the time of her life with all these nutty grownups barreling around the place in full clown effect -- naturally she still talks about it, and assumes there will be another clown party soon. The other marquee item was a boat ride, arranged by one of H.’s friends, in which a local couple loaded us all onto their rig and piloted around the lake for a couple hours -- Annika was SUPER-thrilled, kept singing about “going on a boat ride” and “finding new lands and new friends too!” (a Yo Gabba Gabba! thing, naturally), and when it was over, she had her only meltdown of the weekend -- she didn’t want it to end. Nothing a nap wouldn’t fix, though!


--Grandma & Grandpa visit: Celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary (which was actually July 30), the grandparents decided that what they wanted was to have some time with their kids & grandkids, so that’s what they did! Shuttling back and forth between the two houses, getting ordered around by our kid (“Grandpa, you sit there! Grandma, you sit over here! And I will show you this book!”), that kind of thing. And at the end of it, we lessened Annika’s sadness over their departure by ... going to Hawaii the same day they left to go back to Ohio!


--Hawaii: So yeah ... in the car on the way back from taking A&K back to SFO, we were like, “I wanna go to Hawaii ...” and we hadn’t been since the trip to Molokai in 2007 (our own babymoon). Just for kicks, I looked up flights ... and there were some really really cheap ones to Maui, Kauai and the Big Island. So I checked out vacation house rentals ... and there were some gorgeous, luxe ones, right where we wanted to be on the Big Island, for less than a room at the Holiday Inn. We both asked for the PTO from work, and got it ... and boom, booked on Sunday, FOR the next Sunday! It was AWESOME. The “cation house,” as Annika called it, was a unit in a high-end luxury development, a 2BR/2.5BA with a beautiful kitchen, a lanai with a Viking grill, a great pool, private beach club access, the whole deal. Our days started at the CRACK OF DAWN thanks to our little human alarm clock, so whichever one of us was on dawn patrol would go downstairs and get breakfast to take out onto the lanai, where we’d eat in the shade, fanned by a warm tropical breeze, and then Annika would dart around on the lawn, picking up stuff, smelling flowers, barefoot in the grass. Then we’d all get greased up with SPF 70, put on swimsuits, pack a cooler, and go to one of the two beaches where we spent most of our time -- the private beach club (which had cabanas we could stay in, plus a restaurant where we’d eat before heading home), or the “enhanced” one next to another resort down the road a piece, which we’d stumbled onto during our trip there in 2005 (this one had shady areas under trees where we’d set up camp). Both were extremely well-protected little coves, with calm, gentle, warm water and mostly families around -- perfect for us! Annika spent a lot of time playing with sand toys, and LOVED going into that warm clear water. It was funny how tightly we hung onto her in the water, when right next to us, Hawaiian families had kids smaller than Annika just bobbing in the waves, sitting in floaties, perched on boogie boards, what have you. Heh. But so anyway, then we’d shower at the outdoor showers, eat lunch (sandwiches or from the restaurant, depending on where we were), then go home to the ‘cation house for a nap. After that, it was either the complex’s pool, followed by a grilled dinner at the house, or a trip down the road to a little shopping area with restaurants. Annika was again the model child, whether we were at the beach restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton or the Roy’s -- it is really, really nice to have her at this stage, where she doesn’t need special food or a sippy cup, and she has the social stamina to sit at the table with us for as long as the meal takes, and can amuse herself with crayons & paper or whatnot once she’s done. And really the whole trip was like that -- we never even turned the TV on (though we did watch Yo Gabba Gabba! on the computer once as a special treat before Annika’s bedtime). All in all, a perfect vacation, and all the better because it was such a surprise that we got to do it. We’re all ready to go again!




SEPTEMBER

--Baby's First Trip to the ER! It was just croup, and only ER because it was after hours, but ... oi. We held the phone up so the nurse could hear her breathing, and she was like, "ER now pls kthxbai." You could tell she thought diphtheria or something people are insanely not vaccinating for now -- but we got her her DIP-TET. heh). Whew! Meds and Yo Gabba Gabba = better times.

--FogFest: In what is usually the most beautiful weekend of the year, Pacifica has its annual FogFest, a big street fair with booths, crafts, fried foods, beer, a horrifying(ly delicious) signature drink called a Fogcutter, and several stages where bands play. This one was a great one; beautiful sunny day, friends Tom & Danny came up from San Jose, and we all rambled around for several hours. The highlight, though, was Annika discovering this one bluegrass band -- once she heard them, she insisted on staying to the end of their set, dancing like a little maniac, yelling for more. We ended up buying their CD, since she loved the music so much. Good times!




OCTOBER

--Annika’s Third Birthday!!! We weren’t planning on doing a big do, but a couple weeks before, she said she wanted “a party and balloons” for her birthday, so we rounded up the usual gang (M&H fam, Lendlers, Tommy, Bamanda, P&A & the cousins), made a few dozen cupcakes, decorated with Yo Gabba Gabba wall decals & tableware, and it was on! We had a gorgeous sunny Saturday (a real surprise, considering the foggy chilly crap summer we’d had), so everyone could be outside. She loves balloons, so R. picked up a disposable tank of helium and great fun was had by all, filling up and flying balloons, or just sucking the helium and talking through it. The birthday girl got a lot of great gifts, but the marquee item from us was a real skateboard! R. got it at a skate shop -- she loved having her own, “Just like Muno and Plex!” She’s not riding it solo yet, but undoubtedly she will be soon enough. :-)


--Her 3-year checkup: All went well, she was 36.5 inches tall and 31 pounds, and the doctor was really impressed with her independence, articulateness and ability to do the eyesight chart (plus the proto-reading). She had to get a flu shot and a vaccine of some sort or another, so I took her to Celia’s for lunch afterward for being such a brave girl.


--Babyschool promotion: Right around her birthday, the teachers told us she was ready to move to Primary 2, so they phased it in over a couple of weeks. Her new teachers are Ms. Priti, Ms. Rosie and Ms. Josie. It was a little tough because she loved her old teachers so much (especially Ms. May), but she still gets to see them, and she really was needing the more interesting and complicated stuff the older class does. They learn letters, and numbers, and other stuff like dinosaurs, continents (aka “contaments), etc., and they make cooler crafts -- it’s been a really good situation for her.


--Halloween: For months, she’d been clear about what she wanted to be for Halloween: DJ Lance Rock, from Yo Gabba Gabba! Fortunately for us, they have a great DJ Lance Rock costume online for toddlers, so I ordered it, and OMG, it was hysterically funny! She loved it, wanted to wear it all the time, we took a million pics. For trick-or-treating, we went down to Sunnyvale so she could join cousin A. and her gang of little maniacs going door-to-door in their apartment complex. It was a blast -- and this year, she really had the hang of it. One house had a motion-activated ghost that shook and lit up (red eyes! ooooooh!), and she DID NOT like that at all, and occasionally still brings it up now, two months later, but other than that, it was awesome. We weren’t sure how we were going to cut her off, in fact, before it got really late, but at one point she just announced, “I am done.” and that was that!




NOVEMBER

--Grrr. My bosses made me come in on Tuesdays for November and December, which is really too much for her at babyschool (the days are so long! it’s kind of overwhelming), plus it disrupts our whole routine, puts extra stress on R., and doesn’t add one tiny bit to my productivity -- but whatever. The silver lining is, she’s gotten to go to Little Movers, which is this 45-minute pre-gymnastics thing on Tuesdays -- she LOVES it, and always gets psyched to go on Movers days.


--Sauce-o-ween: We didn’t quite make it on Halloween this year, but this was a standout Sauce party. M. and E., M&H’s sons, are really enjoying Annika these days -- she’s a great audience for their goofing around, she thinks they’re hilarious and fun and they think the same about her. M. in particular seems to get the most charge out of it -- after she’d gone to bed Friday night, he asked when she’d be getting up, and when I said “Reeeeeally early tomorrow morning,” he said, “Good! Because no Annika equals no fun!” He read books to her, showed her how to play with their toys -- it was awesome to see the three kids having so much fun together. It was also great because we for once got it together to do something on Saturday: First, we all went hiking out in the redwoods (half a mile or so along a railroad track under the trees, then down into a spot called the Garden of Eden, along a cold creek -- GORGEOUS!!), and it was a nice enough day for shorts. Then, a stop in at Starving Musician, a music store in Santa Cruz, which all the kids enjoyed (even the ones who are minor children, heh). Annika sat down in front of a drum kit, put on the headphones she’d seen some guy using, and started playing -- it was hysterical, and one of the photos I took ended up going on our holiday card.


--Thanksgiving trip to Texas: On the every-other-year schedule we’ve sort of gotten into, we elbowed aside the holiday crowds and went to Mamalah’s house for the week. From the Sandford Family Thanksgiving party on the Sunday after we arrived (where Annika got to know her young cousins Jack and Alden, among others), to the old-time weenie roast out on the farm (more Jack and Alden!), to the big day o’turkey itself, we all had a great time, filled with family visits (Great-Granddad Kelly, Uncle Jake & Aunt Jill, Cousin Ronda & fam), grandmother/grandkid fun and of course several meals at Casa Torres.


Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I was totally gonna blog more ...

... aaaaand then I lost the wad of notes I'd scribbled over the last six-plus months. Yay me! So I spent some time reconstructing things -- here's what I got, arranged roughly month by month. Read on!