The view out the window: house across the street being demolished, providing lots of awesome toddler entertainment.
She felt better fast, and was up to her usual exploratory tricks:
In mid-March we went to FL for a week to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We left the cameras at home, but brought the videocamera and shot a bit of video. My laptop is too full to download any from the camera, though, so I'll do that as soon as I can make some space.
The weather in South Florida was perfect the entire week. Walks, hanging out at the little park near Grandma and Grandpa's house, counting lizards, counting lizards, and hanging out at the fancy club pool. [Sam can just barely doggy-paddle short distances. We've taken a break on the swimming lessons (been doing taekwondo this half-year instead) but need to get back to those before summer camp-- at the recent birthday party of a friend, about 2/3 of the kids could swim independently already, and it'll certainly be nice not to have to watch Sam as closely once I start taking Frida in the water more. She's not allowed in the big pool at Grandma and Grandpa's club, but she loved splashing in the baby pool.]
At the end of the week Aunt Liz and Aaron surprised us all by coming down for a couple of days to visit, having just found out that they matched for residencies at their joint first choice. It was great to be able to see them too, and to get to know Aaron a little bit, since we'd just barely met him before.
The day after we got back was Sam's sixth birthday! We went to Flatbread (awesome local brick-oven, local-ingredients pizza place) for bowling + pizza. Sam has a somewhat unconventional but surprisingly effective technique:
Frida didn't actually bowl, but she contemplated the pins and her future as a candlepin bowler:
Sam finished his meal with a brownie sundae. Yum.
Frida eyed it eagerly (and was eventually given a bit). You can get a good sense of her mischievous expression here; we've been seeing it more and more recently.
(post-first children seem to get sweets and general junk food a lot earlier than first children do, and a lot more frequently thereafter!)
We'd originally scheduled Sam's party for the next weekend, but first Frida got the stomach flu (while J. was traveling) and then just as he was back and I was all caught up with laundry, I got it... on the morning of the party. We rescheduled for the following weekend. It was a lot of fun; will post pics as soon as I've heard back which parents are ok with me posting pics of their kids. We had a rainforest theme, with some of the saved decorations from Sam's family week at school, and a bunch of games lined up to keep 8 5-6-7-year-olds occupied and thus not tearing up the house. Sam has a nice cohort of friends and has really settled comfortably into school; I think he's ready for first grade and will enjoy it.
He got a bunch of games for his birthday; we've been enjoying playing Uno, Othello and Guess Who? with him. It's nice that we're getting to be able to do more and more mutually enjoyable things together. His books are now actually fun and interesting to read, even the (still-favored) non-fiction ones. (It's not that I don't also love Frida's board books-- mostly because I have disappeared the ones that I can't bear to read, and so we have a large and largely charming assortment-- but after the nth reading of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, one does crave a bit more content.)
Sam learned about powers of ten in Math Circle last week, and that night Josh blew his mind with this video. He's reading more and more easily, and writing as well; by the time he got through all of his birthday thank-you's, he could whip one off in mere minutes (especially when motivated by the promise of watching an episode of Wild Kratts, his latest PBS kids science show obsession, once he'd finished that day's allotment of cards).
Late in March, our new couch was finally delivered. We'd planned to get a smallish full-size couch that's kept in stock, but as soon as our futon-couch was out (Craig's List), we liked the empty space so much that we decided to wait the extra 8-10 weeks for the "apartment size" couch. It fits nicely in our little living room, and still seats all four of us comfortably. It's not nearly as cool looking as the mid-century-esque, pale blue velvet one I briefly lusted after, but it's much more comfortable than our old futon-couch and looks way better. And, as I noted to a friend recently, we are not in the pale blue velvet time in our lives. We are in the brown microsuede time in our lives.
Frida has fully entered the "do it myself" phase of toddlerhood, pointing to her chest and saying "dah dah" (her name for herself), meaning that she will do it. This is easily confused with her sign + word for help, which consists of holding her open hand against her chest and saying "hahp". This is all well and good (if a bit slooow) when she is capable of doing whatever it is she'd like to do on her own-- go down the stairs, for example. It's less good when she simply isn't able to do what she wants. Tonight, for example, her bedtime snack: she wanted O's with milk, and after I let her choose the bowl herself and put the O's into the bowl herself, I of course wouldn't let her pour the milk (from the half-full gallon jug) herself, and told her so calmly, despite her insistence. Result: a screaming body-flinging-on-floor fit. After she calmed down, with some help from a hug, I brought the bowl (with milk and O's) to the table-- and she promptly upended it on the table in a continuing fit of pique. And then when I wiped that up with a rag (instead of letting her pick up the individual O's and replace them in the bowl, one by sopping one, as milk dripped onto the floor and her lap), she freaked again. Our days aren't quite this dramatic-- it was bedtime, and she was extra tired-- but oy it's exhausting.
And then there's the bolting: This past weekend, it was time to get Sam some new jeans. All but 4 of his current pants/jeans show a significant portion of his socks. So we went to the nearby cute little mom-run consignment store, with toys in the back. The door was propped open in the sudden springy warmth we had this past weekend. Sam had to pee on no less than 3 occasions during the trying on of 5 pairs of jeans (much water consumed post-taekwondo), and took an eteeeeernity to pull pairs of pants on and off his body while squawking in exaggerated embarrassment each time Frida or I opened the curtain of the single changing stall, and mid-way through all of this Frida discovered the open door and ran for it a few times before they kindly closed it for us. In the end, we managed to nearly double the number of wearable pants in his drawer without losing Frida in the process, phew. J's gone most of the next month and a half of weekends (traveling 8 times in 10 weeks), and I can't stop running errands altogether until June... but days like this? leave me wiped out.
Frida's vocabulary has been growing together with her pushes for independence, accompanied by occasional co-opting of whole, complete-with-intonation expressions. Recently: many dramatic exclamations of "oh nooooo!" (with frequent dropping of objects just to be able to say it). She still doesn't pronounce many consonants, so we do a lot of guessing based on subtle differences in vowel sounds, but her consonants too are getting clearer by the day. She makes frequent references to songs, routines, and books-- e.g., whenever she sees a penguin picture or photo anywhere, she turns her head side to side (from Eric Carle's From Head to Toe book); whenever she's on the bed she mimics jumping, then shakes her finger and says "nondies", i.e. "monkeys", from "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" And her social awareness is growing, too; she loves feeling in on a joke, and laughs along sociably whenever any of us are laughing at a joke or cartoon or interaction, even if she couldn't possibly know what we're laughing about.
In me news, I had a great job interview early in March for an adjunct position at a college near here. After it was over, I decided to finally get my nose pierced, something I've been thinking about doing since ca. 2003. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, and I like how it looks; a mama friend whose nose ring I have long admired came with me as my nose doula and inspiration. I found out the other candidate for the teaching position was internal and was hired, but the department voted to ask the Dean to create a second position for me; fingers crossed, because I think it would be very good for me right now.
