coupla pics

A few pics, before the big vacation post(s; might have to be two, because there are a lot of nice pictures to share from MV):

Frida got a set of bongos from Omi and Opa for her birthday. They are a hit, no pun intended:


She also likes to sit on them:



(See her toy phone in the background-- on the far right of the top picture? that was one of her gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. She likes to put the wrist strap around her arm and walk around the house with it, often with a dishtowel or piece of laundry (or recently, my bathing suit bottoms, retrieved from the beach bag) draped artfully around her shoulders. For hours.)

Sam got a new soccer ball. Bean likes it.



She also likes to sit on it:

Frida is 1!

We had a nice weekend with lots of family in town: Grandma & Grandpa (who were already here celebrating cousin Ezra's birth-- he's gorgeous and healthy, and everyone is doing well), Omi & Opa, and Aunt Liz and her boyfriend Aaron. On Sunday we had a party with a few friends and neighbors, along with all the family. Frida was skeptical about cupcakes:



But she quickly got the idea:







[Edited to add: this cupcake recipe is divine. AND uses up one large, or two small, zucchini, for those of you with gardens or CSA shares.]

She got some lovely gifts-- thanks everyone, especially for the travel bed from Grandma and Grandpa, which will come in very handy next week on Martha's Vineyard. A few friends also made donations in her name-- thanks again!-- to the Central Asia Institute.

On Monday, Frida's actual birthday, we went to the beach with Omi and Opa. Frida loooooves the surf! Opa took her into very gentle lapping water, just getting her legs wet (it was cold!), and she was exhilarated, shrieking and jumping. When her lips were starting to get blueish, he lifted her onto the warm, drier sand to toddle for a bit, she made a beeline back for the water, over and over. She didn't even mind when she fell forward and got a face full. I didn't bring a camera, so have to wait for pics and/or video from Omi and Opa.

That night Grandma and Grandpa joined us for a dinner at which I made some of her favorite foods: fried chicken (yum!); corn on the cob (sliced off for her; her 3 teeth aren't *quite* up to the job); and green beans. Later that evening, Sam did the ice cream dance together with J., Opa, and Grandpa. It worked so well they got TWO pints!

Many many thanks to Opa for putting up our rain barrel, getting our grill functioning again, and installing a fabulous new faucet in our kitchen sink, so that we don't have to stoop forward quite so uncomfortably when doing dishes. Thanks also to Omi for dinner, and for lots of cleaning and organizing, including rearranging our porch so that it's a nice place to spend time. And thanks to both Grandma and Omi for lots of help with both Frida's party and her birthday dinner.

Sam tolerated being the non-center of attention quite well for a five-year-old; he got to play nerf baseball with Grandpa and Liz and Aaron, showed off his bike-riding skills, painted Frida a onesie, and ran around like a crazy boy at her party. It helped having so MANY people around; there was generally a lot of grandparental/auntie attention to go around. The main negative effect of his not-birthday-kid status, I think, was that we neglected entirely to feed him during the party and afterward, so that for at least 6 hours-- from 4-6 while everyone was noshing, and then afterward for a couple of hours when the family stuck around for gift opening, and then after that while we continued to nosh and tidy and other friends who'd gotten the time wrong stopped by-- he ate nothing more than a cupcake. And at 9:30, when we were belatedly putting him to bed, he asked, "But when are we going to have dinner?" And when we explained that we weren't having dinner because we'd been snacking so much, he said he hadn't eaten at all other than the cupcake, and then started sliding into a miserable fit in which he insisted that we ALL have dinner TOGETHER, something we'd COOKED, and sit down to eat it AT THE SAME TIME. And once he'd recovered (over tortellini, hastily defrosted and eaten all together; at 10PM some requests are worth giving in to), he somberly explained that nobody had remembered to feed him because nobody was really paying much attention to him, because it was Frida's party. Tough, tough life this boy has-- he got not one, but SEVERAL gifts from sensitive grandparents who didn't want him to feel left out. Anyway, he's none the worse for wear; probably better, in fact, for having adjusted to not having the family focus on him all the time.

Finally: yesterday I tried to take a proper birthday picture of Frida. I got some ok ones but nothing that feels like it will serve as her One Year Photo; maybe that will work better on Martha's Vineyard, with lots of time on our hands. The best so far:












[See the rain barrel hidden there behind the Rose of Sharon bush? aqua blue, taller than Frida? It collects rainwater from two downspouts, and will (when we set that part up) then drain, via a spigot we can open or shut, into two drip hoses, watering flower beds along the house, on one side, and around the Japanese maple, on the other. I hate the idea of watering the garden & lawn with drinking water; as a result, it gets pretty brown during dry weeks, especially in a summer like the one we're having this year. So this will help a little bit.]

PS: Tonight she climbed onto our couch. By herself. Well, she grabbed onto J's shorts to haul herself up, after swinging one foot up (the couch is at about armpit height for her). But she could just as easily have used the arm rest for that. We're doomed. A few weeks ago, I was predicting she'd be on top of the (upright) piano at 18 months. I'm revising that down to 16 months. Tops.

men's bodies

I was just asking Sam when he thought his new baby cousin would be born (he's due tomorrow, so we're all eagerly waiting). He thought about it a bit, then said:
"For women I think having a baby is really hard, but for men, it's easy."
me: "Why do you think it's easy for men?"
Sam (again, after thinking for a bit): "Women's bodies have to do more than men's do. Men's bodies just have to do the sperm loving. That's all they have to do."

Ha. Not sure where he got that particular phrase, but he has a point. In fact, there's a bunch of evolutionary theory that's all related to this exact point, where mammals are concerned...

On Tuesday, Sam and Frida went to the beach with Stephanie and a couple of her friends. After they were back, tired out, happy, and not at all sunburned, I asked Sam what his favorite part had been. He liked kicking down all the sand castles they'd made (apparently they'd made a lot). He told me they kicked them down because kings are bad. Why, I asked. "Because they make bad rules." This is what happens when kids hang out with folks with anarchist tendencies. Hee hee. As long as it's kings they're talking about, and not our president, I'm not complaining.

summer

I had food poisoning on my birthday. But Sam and Stephanie decorated for me, including with our birthday ring on the table, and our banner:



(You can see that he's started chewing on his t-shirt again; there was a couple of weeks early in the last kindergarten year when he was doing this, along with several classmates, apparently, and recently it started again. Yuck. Like most such habits, though, I think it'll go away faster if we ignore it; certainly bugging him about it hasn't seemed to help.)

Last Saturday, with summer Farmer's Market/CSA bounty in its full glory, this was our dinner. 5 different vegetable combinations, dressed just with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar (ok, and a couple had been sauteed in butter). With bread and cheese. SO YUMMY.



Frida is acting like a toddler these days. Today, she was delighted to discover that her soccer ball fits into the napkin&towel drawer in the kitchen. She is into systematic relocation of stuff, and has a longer attention span about it than she used to. All of the CDs she can reach go onto the floor (from the CD racks); all of the books on a shelf go onto the floor; all of the things on the living room floor over the baby gate:



And she initiates games. Where's Frida?



There she is!



(Note highchair tray with dinner remnants; she ate a surprising quantity of roast pork chop, along with some rice and peaches. She's been eating a lot more lately-- ever since a Fried Chicken Breakthrough on July 4th (girl LOVES fried chicken) and seems bigger in all dimensions.)

from 2 weeks ago

wrote these down and forgot to post:
Sam, two days ago after being chastised for the nth time not to prevent Frida from going where she wants to go (he has been doing a lot of hauling her around, frequently against her will, and is chided about this many times a day, with regular discussions about respecting where she wants to go and thinking about how X would feel for her): "I wish Frida was a robot and we could do whatever we wanted with her."

Sam, this morning at breakfast, apropos nothing: "I bet I’ll be invited to Frida’s wedding."

jokes

...Sam's getting better at them. Well, riddles, really.
Two he came up with today:
What kind of ant fights off germs? An ANT-ibody.

What park is named after one of my uncles? DAN-ehy park.
(So I asked, what about the -ehy? and he said, there must be another park named SARA-e-her.)

Over dessert tonight, he said: "I don't believe in fudge. They think it's fudge, but really it's just a kind of chocolate."

walking Bean

Here she is walking with the wagon, a couple weeks ago:


And here she is Wednesday evening, walking with NO WAGON:


And here's a random funny thing: we have these Quercetti tubes that Sam links into funky horns. She's clearly figured out what they're 'for', and crawls around hooting into one (looking like she's about to go snorkeling):


I haven't yet captured any of Sam's bike riding. We put the pedals on his bike about 3 weeks ago and he pedaled off gleefully, and has barely looked back since. No training wheels. The pedal-less balance bike approach has another house full of converts.

In the car today, driving back from Manchester, NH (where we met a friend and her lovely family for a picnic and park date): Mom, there's something I'm concerned about.
me: Really, Sam? what's that?
Sam: I'm concerned that if we have the windows open in the back, Bean will throw a toy out the window. I don't think we should have the windows open in the back of the car. I'm concerned about that.
(I failed to share his concern. We moved on.)