No sleep

I guess it is time to talk about this on my blog. That way, if any friend or relation happens to read this, you'll have an idea what we're going through and probably understand why I have been a bad correspondent lately. Anyway: last night was Daisy's seventh night in a row of not sleeping (and therefore, number 7 for me, too). I can hardly believe this can sustain itself, but it has, so far. When I say "not sleeping," I should probably describe what I mean-- but that is only a slight exaggeration. I'll describe last night and then you'll have an approximate idea what the previous six have been like.

She did sleep from 7:30 to midnight. At midnight, she started screaming hysterically. It was "Mama, Mama, Mama" and "Gommy, Gommy, Gommy," though the night before she also screamed for "Dada." I am sure she was standing up in her crib. Mark spent an hour and a half trying to get her back to sleep--giving her a bottle and rocking her. Every time he tried to put her back in the crib, she started screaming again. I know what this is like because I was the one who tried it a couple nights ago. Easily, you can spend the entire night doing this. So finally, I said to just bring her into bed with us--probably a huge mistake, but again, the alternative seems to be spending the entire night in the rocking chair. (Or, I guess, letting her scream till she throws up, which doesn't seem like an option right now and wouldn't allow for us to sleep, anyway.)

So she came to bed with us at about 1:30. I would say it took 45 minutes to an hour for her to fall asleep. During that time, she insisted on nursing periodically, and when I'd stop nursing her, she'd fidget, toss and turn, and talk. Around 2:30, she went to sleep and slept till about 5:30. I can't say I had three hours of sleep, though, because of the tossing and turning, and because I was perched precariously on the edge of the bed, freezing, because I couldn't get the covers on me without disturbing her and I was just so glad she was finally sleeping. At 5:30 she was up and my day started.

I guess this would not be so bad if A) it weren't the 7th night in a row and B) I didn't have a job to go to today. I would try to take a nap when she napped-- IF she napped. (That's the other thing--she's not napping well, either.) But I was planning to do some final preparations for my class during her nap today. I should also go to bed earlier, I realize... we hadn't even gone to bed till 11:30, so we'd had no sleep when she woke up at 12. This is a real problem for me. I have a terrible time forcing myself to go to bed early and I am usually trying to do work to get ready for my class the next day, or I just need some time to myself and when she's sleeping is the only time I get it... so I stay up too late.

I am starting to feel pretty wrecked...pretty much like I have the flu. I feel dizzy and my body hurts. I can't believe this would keep going. Doesn't a person have to sleep at some point? I can see several reasons for the crisis, but they don't totally satisfy me. We did go on a trip, and I understand that that would disturb her sleep patterns, but we never had quite such a hard time getting her back into her routine in the past. Also, she is more or less walking, and I have read that big developmental changes can trigger sleep problems. Mark and I have both noticed how fidgety she is at night, like she has all the excess energy, even though I made sure to get her tons of physical exercise yesterday. (Today, I am too tired to go through the same.) On top of these things, the explosion in her language has been so amazing that I can't help wondering if that could be some part of this, too. She has such a desire to be awake, and label things in the world, that she really resists sleeping. Just this morning she's been saying "Rock horse," "Wash hands," "Ten apples," and a lot of her other little two or three word phrases and sentences. Now, if she doesn't get her meaning across, she repeats it insistently until I get it... she really wants to be understood, to communicate things about the world.

Anyway... so all of this stuff is going on with her. And I guess it's making it hard for her to sleep. But I am not sure what's going to happen to us if this doesn't get better soon. Mark has a show tonight in which he has to perform in two bands. He is going to have to do this on about 1.5 hours of sleep, then come home and probably deal with Daisy being awake when he gets here. I said I'd do it, and try to sleep whenever she goes to sleep the first time, but he pointed out that I may have been dealing with her for hours before he even gets home and will be exhausted, too. So... yeah. Things are very, very bad. We all feel sick, including Daisy, I can tell--there are dark circles under her eyes--and it's the end of the semester, with lots of work piling up and no time left to defer it. We may have to alter our upcoming plans to deal with this crisis... we have a sort of idea what to try, but it involves both of us being home consistently at 7:30 pm (earlier, to start the bedtime routine)....

Good to know, good to know

On Sunday night, my first night home from our Thanksgiving trip, five or six screaming fire engines and another vehicle that looked like it probably conveyed the chief of the fire department showed up on our street. There were so many trucks they lined the entire street, and in fact one was parked so as to block one end of the street. Firemen and women were swarming everyone, getting out hoses and cranes, laddering themselves into the top window of a neighboring building. Ambulances and police cars also showed up. Bystanders crowded to watch, and this never happens in our quiet, quiet neighborhood. Two huddled people hugged each other for emotional support in a driveway.

Needless to say, I was worried. I called the SF Fire Department's non-emergency number to find out what was going on, hoping not to be too annoying to them since they were obviously in the middle of a monumental crisis. "Hi, I'm sorry to bother you," I said, "but I am in an apartment next door to a building that's getting a huge response from the fire department, and I was wondering if there was any danger to the buildings around."

"You must be at 45th street," said the very nice, patient fire department man. This did not bode well, I thought, my chest tightening with panic as I prepared to hear that there was a massive bomb threat coming from the neighboring building (this was my best theory, since I didn't see any fire or smell any smoke when I put my head out the window).

The patient fire department men then explained to me that this massive response was actually the standard response for any call of perceived smoke in a building, and that, in reality, this was the MINIMAL number of emergency vehicles that would show up. He said they were having trouble finding the source of the smoke and that it would probably turn out to be nothing. Five minutes later, they were all gone.

I feel so much safer now.

Just got home from trip

I wanted to let you know, "you" being any friend who's wondering why I've been a bad correspondent! Also, my cell phone's being screwy again; I can hear messages, but apparently when I call people, they can't hear ME so well. So feel free to leave messages! I'll just find a way to call back on another line till I can get it fixed.

Daisy turned 16 months!

Yes, she did. Yesterday, to be exact. We had a lovely day at Rockaway Beach with our friends Marina and Lulu. This is a great spot, for anyone who hasn't discovered it. It's a really cozy and not too populated beach with nice sand (and exciting waves, yesterday) in Pacifica. We were lucky to have such a beautiful and sunny day in November. Daisy had a ball. I didn't realize she loved the ocean so much. We've got to go more often.

Daisy has a new sentence: "Knock on doors." Lately everything is plural. She calls me "Mamas." New favorite song: "Puff the Magic Dragon." The saddest song in the world WOULD be her favorite. Favorite food: PRUNE JUICE. I am not kidding. She shrieks for it. If we get out her special daisy glass, and she anticipates the "poon" (yes, I know, but let's purify our minds here for a second), she will scream, "Poon! Poon!" and not want to touch any of the other foods we offer her. So we have to reserve "poon" for the end. At first we thought it was that the "poon" was sweet and she doesn't usually get juice. But I gave her a sip of lemonade once and she hated it--too sweet, I think. So... she loves prunes. What can I say?

She is doing well, although she has a terrible diaper rash right now. I don't quite know what to do. We try to change her more often, make sure she's dry, and slather on tons of Desitin. It will start to look a little better, but then all it takes is one big poop and the redness is back. She has been crying in pain, with tears and all (she doesn't usually cry, so this is very hard to watch) when we change her.

She has been walking a bit more. I can't officially announce she is "walking," though, so I hope I can do that by the time she hits seventeen months! She does walk a little, unassisted, but... often she'll take a step or two then sink back to the crawling position. As the physical therapist pointed out, you can see how hard she's working... her little legs shake with the effort. I guess it's the low tone along with the super-flexibility-- it takes more strength for her to do the same things other babies do because of her flexibility, the therapist said... so I have been noticing the shaking in her legs and trying to understand how hard this is for her.

She has also been trying really hard to stand up from a sitting position without leaning on anything. It takes tremendous effort, and she can't quite do it. But she is trying.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy birthday, Mark

To the man who does the funniest Joaquin-Phoenix-doing-Johnny-Cash and Bruce-Springsteen-singing-"Glory-Days" impressions in the world.

That probably doesn't seem like an adequate tribute to my wonderful, kind, patient, loving husband... but let me assure you, he does many other impressions, too, and they are ALL impeccable.

She is amazing!

Daisy just spent hours "reading" by herself on the floor of her room, narrating the books as she goes along. Sometimes she gets it right-- I can hear her pointing things out in the books and naming them, and she'll say "cat," and "keys" and other things that are correct--"hat," "puppy," "pot"--and every now and then she'll do one of her funny mistakes. For some reason, she calls a picture of ice cream "pasta." And I have no idea what she's saying right now but it sounds like "Sight! Sight!"

She can also name some of the characters in the book--"Mickey" in the Night Kitchen, "Mak" for "Max" in Where the Wild Things Are, and "Dicka" in Flicka, Ricka, Dicka. (Just today she also said "Betty" for the girls' deeply-annoying-in-her-perpetual-optimism Aunt Betty.)

Anyway, though, just now I heard her working on her language skills, and it was so amazing to watch her trying to figure things out. She was saying what sounded like "kite," but she finally had it narrowed down to "cake" and I realized she was pointing out the pie in Amelia Bedelia (she also says pie, but lately she has been on "cake" because that's what Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka bake in their endlessly boring tale that she makes me read over and over and over again). Then, after working on her pronunciation of "cake," she lifted her leg and said "kick" and made kicking motions. I think she was working out how these two words that sound so similar can mean different things.

EDIT: Here is the plot synopsis of Flicka, Ricka, Dicka Bake a Cake. "Three little Swedish girls bake two cakes for their mother's birthday surprise, one a burned catastrophe, but the second a golden success." These books were written in the 50s and have beautiful illustrations and quaint stories, and Daisy ADORES them. But it strikes me as quite unfair that the greatest source of tension in the girls' story is whether or not they will burn two cakes. On the other hand, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr--the three identical Swedish boys who are counterparts to Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka--have exciting adventures involving almost drowning and riding into the snowy wilderness on sleds and encountering wolves. I'll admit, however, that one of the Snipp, Snapp, Snurr books revolves around buying their mother a pair of red shoes with gold lining-- but they have to get into exciting adventures in order to obtain them, unlike the girls. Oh well. How shocking-- women faced domestic cliches in the fifties! You'd think I was just learning this.

Actually, it is mostly just amusing to me that Daisy loves the cake burning book so much. She has very interesting taste.

Almost 16 months

Daisy now says "Count" and "One, two, three" (well, all right, "fee") and she has some rudimentary sentences. She will sometimes say, when she rolls a ball, "It comes" (a version of "Here it comes") and she has said "Up and nurse" while standing next to the bed and she has said "I go." I think I mentioned before that she says, "One, two, buck" to prompt the nursery rhyme "One, two, buckle my shoe." I feel like she's on the verge of all kinds of exciting things verbally. She's certainly got more two-syllable words than before("puppy," "ocean," "baby,"`"slipper," "painting," "picture,"
"coffee," just off the top of my head--she wouldn't be our daughter if one of her first multi-syllable words wasn't "coffee") and she is pronouncing things more clearly.

As far as the motor skills, she is more or less where she was a week or two ago: walking five steps or so to get to a familiar person and sort of falling into the person at the tail end. She does walk holding just one hand now, though. I can understand now a bit more of why the physical therapist says walking is harder for her: because she is so flexible and loose-jointed, it actually takes _more_ strength for her to execute some of the moves than it requires for other babies. But instead of being stronger than they are, she is actually probably a little weaker (she has somewhat low muscle tone, though the therapist explained that tone is not the same as strength). She got called "squishy girl!" again, but I'm taking it as a term of endearment!

Daisy sings

This is not exactly a new thing, but this afternoon I was noticing the extent of it. When Daisy hears a song she especially likes, she will fill in some of the words either before or after the singer. So for example, when she listens to the first song on her "They Might Be Giants" album, "No!": they say "we just ride giraffes" (she says "raffe" and points to her giraffe); "and wear bicycles for hats" (she says "hat" and points to her head); "To get to Fibber Island you just close your eyes" (she says "eyes" and points to her eyes); "start fibbing in your mind" (she says "mind"); "and see what you can find" (she says "find"). There's a song in which they repeat the word "mop" and Daisy will always start saying, "Mop, mop!" before that part comes up. I think it is pretty neat.

Things that are cute (sorry)

1. Daisy now asks for a nap by saying, "Nap!" (Sometimes it's more like "Nurse! Nap!")

2. We noticed that she was trying to say "Oh, God," which is apparently something WE say all the time (I am sure you are shocked... I mean, we're not stress cases or anything). It comes out "Ee gott! Ee gott!" It is so danged funny I can hardly stand it.

3. For some reason, whenever she sees a picture of ice cream she declares, "Pasta!" I have NO IDEA why.

State of the Daisy

This is going to be a dull entry for most people to read, so I bequeath forgiveness upon everyone who chooses not to read it. Amendment: I don't expect ANYONE to read it. It's just that one of the reasons I have this blog--the main reason, at this point--is to have a record of Daisy's babyhood later. I have been wanting to write "update" entries to get the details down about what she's like at different ages. When she was an infant I really believed I'd never forget any of it, so vivid and intense it all seemed, but of course, I've learned since then that things do get blurry after awhile--and then you are very grateful if you bothered to write it all down. So, I don't want to be so hung up on whether or not it's going to be interesting for people to read, or whether it sounds self-indulgent (my typical hang-ups). I just want to write my record down and have it for later. I'm going to try to do that now, at least once a month.

Daisy's 15-and-a-half month State of the Daisy update

Daisy has been taking some steps lately, but she is not doing what I could comfortably call "walking" yet. It is very cute-- SHE calls it walking. It is a little scary to behold because she tries to go very fast to get from point A (a beloved person) to point B (another beloved person). Usually the last part of the "walk" involves a free-fall into point B. I have been nervous about her taking more spills since my horrible, regrettable error the other night-- in my own view, the worst mistake I've made as a mother thus far. We were having a tough night and I think I was more discombobulated than usual; she'd had diarrhea and was doing a lot of crying, a rare thing for her, as I was getting her ready for bed. I finally got her to sleep on the little cot in her room, and then looked away for a few seconds while I turned on the space heater. I turned back just in time to see her rolling off the bed and hitting the floor! It wasn't a very long fall, and I got her back to sleep almost immediately--she only cried for seconds--but the next day she had a big bruise on her forehead.

So the motor skills have been developing some lately. It's still a bit funny to me to say that, since so many of her younger friends have been walking for months now, and some of them are even RUNNING at this point. But her most amazing developments have certainly been in the verbal department. I am almost at a loss to describe them adequately. At one year, I tried writing down all her words in a list, but by now it would be completely impossible to do that because she has so many, and every day it seems like she says something new. This morning at her usual 6:30, Mark and I could hear her yelling from her crib, "One on top!" I guess this is her new and most amazing thing--stringing words together. "One on top" is a reference to one of her favorite books, Dr. Seuss's _Ten Apples Up on Top_. Daisy puts everything "up on top," which is very cute but not always a good thing. Yesterday she put her scrambled eggs "up on top" and then spent the day with greasy, buttery hair, and this morning she put her grapes on her head.

I think it is very cool that she is putting words together--she also says, "One, two, buck" to prompt you to say the nursery rhyme that starts "One, two, buckle my shoe"--but there is something else very cool going on verbally that is a little harder to describe. I guess it's that she's using words more purposefully, in contexts that make them more meaningful. A few days ago, she was on the swing at the playground at my parents' house and she said, "Fwing! Happy!" several times; I think this was the first time she told us how she was feeling, using a word. It happened again today when my mom arrived. She was "walking" back and forth between us, saying, "Walk! Happy!" I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to hear my little girl telling us she is happy.

When we read books, she points everything out by name, and it just seems like there's nothing she can't get now. She knows all the body parts: arm, hand, fingers ("fing"), foot, toes, leg, knee, "button" (belly-button), face, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair...even "teeth." She definitely knows all her domestic farm animals and most of the animals in the zoo, too-- and "monk," "zeba," "raffe" (giraffe), "lion," and "peng" (penguin), fish, bird.... She can point out the main people in her life in a photo album and say their names: Mama, Dada, "Gammae" (my mother), and Nana (Mark's mother). She has also pointed out Grandpa and Aunt Sam, although I don't know if she says their names. She puts a phone to her ear and says, "Ho? Daize!" (Hello, it's Daisy.) She uses an article now, sort of, with a noun--she'll say "da bus" sometimes instead of just "bus." She also makes connections are surprising to me--so for example, she knows the yard outside her window is filled with "dirt," a big plot of dirt, but I was surprised when she pointed to some tiny specks of dirt on the bus window the other day and said, "Dirt." Her attentiveness and retention of information is sometimes so astonishing to me. We have a fairly new album of children's songs, and the other day in the car she started saying "Puff! Puff!" emphatically during "Yellow Submarine"; as it turns out, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is the next song on the album, though that's something I myself didn't remember.

More often than not, now, she can tell me what she wants or is thinking using words. She asks for grapes ("grap-ay"), apple ("app"), "pasta" (anything made out of noodles), water ("wawa"), a snack ("nack"); she says "nurse" or "baba" to let us know which of those she's wanting; she even says "nap" to tell us she's tired. She asks for her "bath" by name, she tells us food is "hot" or "cold"; she brings books to me and says "read"; she asks to go to the "park" or on the "fwing." She says "sand," "oshe" (ocean), "ball," "book," "phone"--can name pretty much any of her toys ("cars," "box" for stacking blocks, "lamby" or "dog" or "ted" for a stuffed animal--"duck" or "ducky" for her rubber duck--"monk" for her monkey.... She says "baby" for her baby doll or a real baby. One of my favorite things she does now is say "hug" when she gives a toy a hug. For a long time now we've been able to get hugs by saying, "Give Mama [or Dada] love." She's not so big on kissing, though she'll sort of grudgingly submit to being kissed by wincing and offering you her cheek. She doesn't GIVE kisses, however, at least not to humans (she'll put her mouth on a toy to give it a kiss).

She describes books more specifically than just "book," too. For example, if she wants _In the Night Kitchen_, she asks for "Mickey" (the little boy in the book).

Another amusing thing is that she associates Mark with coffee, appropriate since he does drink so much of it. When she hears the coffee grinder in the morning she says, "Dada! Coffee." She has a fabulous sense of humor, loves to laugh, loves jokes. She is happiest in familiar circumstances and around people she's used to. One thing I am learning--should say "have learned"--is that she's not too happy in large groups or situations where there's a lot of stimulating activity. This is the only time, other than when she's extremely tired or in discomfort, that she gets fussy. She can get to the point of a tantrum when she's in a large group and there's too much going on. (Oh, I guess in honesty I should add that she has tantrums when we try to take her off the "fwing," too. At the playground, that is now the only thing she wants to do, and she gets very upset when she's taken off, even when she's been on there an hour.) If I spend the whole day with her, or if it's a small group of people she's familiar with, she is usually totally fine all day. She is even good in the car, and has been ever since I got my new car with CD player. As long as I play CDs she likes, she will not make a fussy sound the whole time she's in the car, even if she's in there for an hour or two (and she's capable of staying awake that whole time, too!). She reads books, identifies things outside her window (horses, cows, houses, etc.), or listens to her songs contentedly.

She has been sleeping for about 11 hours at night, from roughly 7:30 to roughly 6:30. She takes one nap, usually around 11 in the morning, an hour and a half to two hours long. Our nighttime ritual has been pretty consistent and reliable. She eats dinner, has a bath (usually), maybe has a book or two, then has nursing or a bottle and goes to bed. So sleeping and bedtime have been okay for awhile now (though I'm aware it can always change); feeding her, however, continues to be a struggle. There is almost no food she seems to like a great deal, though the winners would have to be sliced-up grapes, Cheerios, broccoli, and noodles. She also likes prune juice (!!!!!), which she calls "poon," and her Organics cereal bars. But... it is a struggle. If we can get her to eat other things, we can never get her to eat much of it. She eats very small meals and never with relish. A lot of times we have to sort of trick her into eating, or distract her with songs or antics and slip food into her mouth here and there. And a lot of times she just accumulates the food in her mouth without swallowing it and then spits it back out.

Okay, I think I'll end this update for now, but will be making more of an effort to record these details each month!

Daisy in pink overalls

Daisy's third ad

Macy*s - Our Stores - Catalogs - Catalogs

She is in the Veterans Day Sale catalog, on p. 26. I'll try to publish the image in a new post.

Daisy's third ad

Hello! Daisy's third ad is now out; she is on p. 26 of the Macy's Veterans Day Sale catalog. I am really in need of some copies of the catalog, so if you or anyone you know might have gotten this one, I would greatly appreciate it if you could put it aside for me. I would also really love any copies of the Gift Guide (the one where she's on p. 80 wearing a plaid dress and headband). I have only one each of these two catalogs, and it just isn't enough! The cat could rip them; a crease could appear down the middle of her face; or I could, you know, misplace it. I will only feel secure when I have THREE copies of each catalog she has been in. You have more important things in your lives to worry about, I realize; but if you happen to see this catalog, or if you think someone you're related to or friends with might have it, and it isn't too much of an inconvenience, then you would have my greatest appreciation for obtaining it for me!

Daisy's Halloween

She was a cowgirl. She wore a little fringe-y salmon-colored dress that her great-grandmother made, and I believe there are pictures of me at her age wearing it--I have to try to find them. Completing the ensemble were black boots and a kerchief tied around the neck; my mom bought a pirate hat and squashed it in the middle to look more like a cowboy hat, but a) she wouldn't keep it on and b) it still looked like a pirate hat.

She also visited a pumpkin patch and tried to put pumpkins on her head (like in her beloved Dr. Seuss book _Ten Apples Up on Top_). [Side note: Today she put a rubber duck on her head and enunciated quite clearly, "One on top." She said it twice, with both Mark and me as witnesses!]

She behaved quite abominably at the Halloween party, being a cranky fussbudget the whole time, but it was still fun to see all the babies in their costumes (thank you, host Lisa!). We also went to a parade of costumed babies and their parents down Chestnut Street. The parade organizers handed out orange and black balloons and many of the businesses along the street were handing out trick or treat items. I actually gave Daisy mini M and Ms... I wouldn't have thought she was ready for candy, but she enjoyed them to a frightening extent.

It has been a pretty fun Halloween.