mama[mamamamama]

In Hawaii one morning Fife said her first word:

Mama[mamamamama] from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.


The other kids were beyond thrilled, telling all the strangers we passed on the street. They wanted to have a party, a first word party, and Lucy made a sand cake:

the oracle

We call Dr. Bluhm the oracle. He has been our pediatrician since Lucy was born, but she did everything too early to leave time for predictions. With Oscar, Dr. Bluhm's word is fact: he said he would probably crawl around 8 months (check), walk at about 13 months (check), and still have plenty of time in the week before his first birthday to catch another cold (check).

At the 15-month visit, the oracle guessed that at his current rate, Oscar would probably start talking around 17 months or so, so as September rolls around we wait, watching his lips pucker and purse, playing with "ma" and aerated "pah", wondering what he'll have to say. 

friday cute shot

nine months

Dear Oscar,

At your six month check-up, when you were just maybe possibly balancing in a seated position for up to two seconds if I got your body just right before I took my hands away, Dr. Bluhm predicted that you would start crawling around nine months. And lo and behold, five days before that milestone you did it: wobbly, forward, knee-based movement. Then three days later I heard you saying "Mamamamama" from your crib.

A big week!

You've been a lot fussier lately, wanting to be held often, and I think I can see the start of tooth number five on your top left gum.

The other morning your Daddy went in to get you after your nap, and he came upon you sitting up in your crib, smiling, grabbing a book off the dresser to chew on.

Also this month: your first fall off the bed, head first onto the hard floor on Christmas Eve; your first Christmas. Experimenting with food: applesauce, bananas, sweet potatoes, and bean soup are standbys; you've tried pumpkin and zucchini and barley and carrots and chicken and lentils, Indian spiced chickpeas and parsnips and broccoli and cauliflower and cherries and prunes, oranges and avocados and yogurt and sunbutter. With your sister once the novelty of eating wore off we fell into months of sweet potatoes and applesauce, so we're working harder on variety this time around.

I've started enjoying you even more. I feel like I can more intentionally interact with you, do things that I know will make you laugh; you not only smile when I come into a room, but you often cry when I leave it. You giggle when I raise my eyebrows or give you a high five; I look into your eyes when I nurse you and feel relaxed and happy. Sometimes you burrow your head into my shoulder for a snuggle, and I hold you real close and take a big breath of your hair.

All in all, I'd say it's been nine good months.

I love you, kid!

Love,
Mama

two teeth

Oscar finally got those teeth I'd been expecting for two months. The first one came a couple of weeks ago, and then the next one followed. Two tiny little sharp lines in the bottom of his mouth.

The process has been less painful (seemingly for all of us) than it was for Lucy, or else Oscar is just much more stoic.

first food

In extremely belated news, Oscar had his first food two weeks ago! I was planning to hold off until he was old enough to just eat things straight from the table in baby-led-weaning fashion, but we were having so much trouble getting him to sleep for longer than four-hour stretches that we thought maybe some food would help get him full.

So . . . hello, sweet potato!

It was a much different and more rewarding experience than feeding Lucy for the first time was. From us, such low expectations. And from Oscar, such enthusiasm! After a few bites he was practically leaping out of our arms, lunging at the spoon. He wanted that food IN HIS MOUTH.

Forget the spoon, he'll take the whole potato, please.

Since then we've had a similar reaction to bananas, and a more muted reaction to rice cereal. Cauliflower was too chunky. Applesauce was a no-go on try number one, but he liked it fresh at the apple orchard last weekend, smothered in cinnamon.

goodbye july, goodbye unsupervised couch time

Oscar can roll over! He did it once a week ago, then four times yesterday evening, and he didn't like the outcome (ending up on his stomach) any more than Lucy did at that age.


Oscar Rolls Over from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.

summer lovin'

And more maternity leave adventures! (Despite the post title, both of these things technically took place while it was still Spring.)

Swimming! Lucy loves it. And Nana got her a new life jacket that doesn't go around your neck, so now she likes to wear it all the time and uses it to "swim" in the deeper water where she can't touch. And the water slide! The Portland Parks department really has their stuff together.

Hiking and picnicking at Powell Butte Park. This is a 600-acre park on the outskirts of Portland surrounding a cinder cone. The park is covered with tall trees that make great shade; at first we had a bit of trouble finding a place that wasn't too cold to put down our picnic blanket. (We were planning a picnic at the top, but some of us were too hungry to wait by the time we got there.) After the picnic we thought we'd just hike up a bit of the way until Lu got tired, but some people on the way down mentioned horses at the top, and that plus mud-stomping along the way (she said she was doing it for the next people, so they wouldn't have to step in the mud) kept her energy up all the way to the top.

At the top is a meadow full of wildflowers ("more flowers than I ever dreamed of") where you can supposedly see three mountains at once; unfortunately that part is under construction right now so our lovely hike through the woods ended at the top with huge construction vehicles marching by. We had to stop to feed Oscar, and there at the top we heard his first gurgled laugh. Hooray! Lucy then started making faces to try to make him laugh again, while he looked on adoringly.

The sun was hot up at the top, and Lucy was by turns brave and frightened of the loud truck noises, and since the hike ran into naptime she was beginning to melt down by the time we turned around to go back down.

Luckily down is much faster than up, and we met some horses on the way that we had been looking for at the top, which gave Lucy a much-needed second wind.

gone fishin'

Is there something about the nice weather that makes me want to end my post titles in apostrophes? When summer is beautiful, who can be bothered to finish a gerund?

We continued our stretch of weekday summer adventures with boat fishing at Hagg Lake. Oscar managed his first stretch in a lifejacket and on a boat well, the same way he handle most things. Nana was a champ; as usual, doling out grandma love and snuggles with a lap and two arms.

The water was cold enough to make you take a few seconds to catch her breath, and though Lucy initiated the jumping in, when she did it herself she wasn't a fan. Titi, though, who generally avoids cold water in the bathtub, was having a ball.

There was a dearth of fish and therefore also a dearth of fish pictures, but Shaggy found an abandoned rope swing so the day and the sun were fully used.

We also still managed a minor fish fry with the yellow perch we caught. The adults were judicious, making sure there was enough to go around, but when Lucy came to the table she immediately grabbed a handful of the cornmeal crusted bites for her plate, she definitely has radar for the best food on the table.

We are going to have to get that girl a fishing pole.

friday (the 13th) cute shot*

*slightly delayed

lucy wrote a poem

"I see up.
 I see down.
 I see things around my town.



            I wrote that."

you leave her with the grandparents for one second

And when you come back your daughter can trace her own hand with no help from you, thank you very much.

leaf diving

family bike ride!

It's early August but we finally overcame a million tiny obstacles to complete our first family bike ride! It was awesome. And really tiring, apparently I don't use my bicycle muscles often, or at all. But I can get better! I need to get better in order to continue my new Xtracycle family bike dream without severe cognitive dissonance.

I didn't get any pictures because we were all riding bikes, feeling the wind, and smiling to ourselves at our cleverness in achieving this milestone, but I did catch a few last week of Lucy's first bike ride when we borrowed Lilac and Chip's setup as part of a happy coincidence.

Our bike seat is on the back, not the front. It is okay, but I think maybe we need to switch, because the front is awesome.

Thanks for sharing, Lilac!

you're a popsicle, i'm a goldfish

For awhile Lucy has been answering all our questions of why, such as "why are you biting your hand?", or "why are you throwing that on the floor?", or "why is the monster sad?" with one response:

"Just 'cause."

Pithy and true, it seems to me, why else does a toddler do what she does?

But today she asked me why for the first time as we were reciting nursery rhymes.

Lucy: "5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10"
Mama: "I let him go again!"
Lucy: Pause. "Why did you let him go?"

So I guess it begins.

big girl pants

Lucy has been wearing them since Friday.

Guess it's time to put the diapers in the attic, just in time to make space for all those summer dresses.

"i throw towel!"

And we have a sentence.

She also throws apples, squishy pigs, and yesterday morning a small wooden ball at Nana's face, (Sorry about that, Nana.)

On the this-makes-up-for-everything side, she now says "Bless you" when she sneezes.

words, 14 months

spoken*
go
ball
eye
no
baa baa**
mine
out
down
up
hi
dog
Mama
uh-oh**
Dada


signed*
all done
please
fan
water
food
more
milk



*In rough order of appearance, most recent on top.

**Sound or word? This question could apply to a few of the others as well. I don't really want to get into that discussion, as I've been told that tiny mouth muscles are hard to control and tiny people are really supposed to get the benefit of the doubt, but I will say this:"Go!" is perfectly articulated when she sits in her birthday wagon and wants us to zoom her around the house.

the things of lucy i have forgotten to record

1. She says hi. Waves, and says hi. To parents, to friends, to dogs, to birds. To strangers, even. When we pass people on the sidewalk and she bursts out of her solid stare with a smile and a wave, they are perfectly charmed.

2. She sings! It's mostly da-da-da, but to the tune of Frere Jaque, and lately, to some other tune that she seems to have made up. It goes da-DA, da-DA, da-DA, but tuneful. Sometimes she puts her baby doll in the little rocking chair that used to be mine and she stands behind her, rocking the chair and singing in a high ethereal voice. Less tuneful, those lullabies, but lovely nonetheless.

3. She says some words. Or some sounds that pass as words: up, down, dog, mama, dada, out. Today she and her daddy were wrestling over a scarf, and she added 'mine' to the list.

4. She has sixteen teeth, a full and toothsome grin. The last of the pointy eye teeth broke through on the bottom left side last week, and now all that's left is the second set of molars.

5. She signs "please" when she wants something. Really, it's after she whines mightily when something is out of reach and then mama says, "Can you ask nicely?" and she follows up with the belly scratch that is the toddler version of please. I will pretty much give her anything when she combines this gesture with hopeful eyes under those never-ending eyelashes of hers.

the sins of the fathers

A little boy bit Lucy at daycare today.

One story from our family lore is the day my mom went to pick me up from daycare, only to be confronted on her way in by an angry mother, telling her what a terrible baby she was raising, some sort of little hellion with teeth.Well, I never.

The daycare staff apologized profusely to my mom, explaining that I had indeed bitten one of the other children that day, but that they had a policy of not naming names when it comes to these sorts of incidents between children, and they weren't sure how the other mother had come to discover my trespasses, exactly. But nonetheless, it was true.

Later that week at pickup time one of the daycare ladies took my mother aside to let her know, off the record, that the other mother's darling angel had crossed over to the dark side and bitten another baby herself, only her bite was worse--mine had left a little mark, but hers drew blood. So, there was a pleasant vindication for the mother's self-righteousness, some swift cosmic revenge. But, then, I have to wonder--is this my cosmic revenge, visited on Lucy, slightly stale after 26 years?

Poor little Lucy, with her daddy's sweet smile, paying for her mama's propensity to bite. Or maybe the whole point of that story, repeated throughout my childhood, was to prepare me for this: some little urchin's teethmarks on my baby's flesh, a round red circle broken in two. Be wary, it says, of overreaction; build up goodwill instead for Lucy's inevitable turn on the other side of the teeth.