the Violet life

So it’s the middle of June 2008 and our Little Violet is 20 months and 4 days old. I’ve been meaning to update this blog for quite a while now but haven’t ever gotten around to it. Repeat this a few times and now look — it’s been 8 months since our last post (40% of the girl’s life).

Anyway….

So, yeah, V is growing up and up and up. She’s walking, talking, and talking back. Two things haven’t changed: she’s still cute as all get out and she’s still the joy of our lives.

It’s almost impossible to describe the changes since my last update as I’m sure everyone reading this will understand. She now walks confidently down the sidewalk. She’s stringing together sentences now. She’s cultivating her powers of persuasion thru tantrums.

It is also impossible to describe how much better she’s made me feel about my own life. Spending time with her helps me get reacquainted with my own youth and remind me to be joyful about the simple things. There is still nothing better than a hug from Little V. (She’s still more reserved about giving these to me than she is to Mom.)

I’ve given up trying to predict what’s going to come next. Kids at V’s age, we’ve come to learn, hit an amazing sequence of milestones so run together that it’s almost not even worth noting that she’s now running, she’s now using basic sentences, she’s now exhibiting understanding about things she’s experienced before. So many “She’s never done that before.”

I realize that none of this is particularly unique to Violet; billions of other babies have amazed billions of other parents before her. But this is my forum and Violet is my daughter….

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I must also report that I have finally got around to posting pictures again. It was a herculean task, going through the 6G of pictures from past 10 months; but its (pretty much) done and the results are on the photo site. Oh, and another thing that has V has grown into? Being a ham:

One year and one week…and a few days.

Violet turned one year old on 10/19, and to me it feels like a good point to stick a fork in this blog. She’s a toddler now. We started out calling this the New Baby blog, which she sure is not anymore. And it’s mostly about the pictures anyway, which we can still post.

She’s a mercurial, snot-nosed pixie. She’s almost a walkin’, talkin’ GIRL. Every day she lets us know more of what she wants (the telephone! our food! the cat!), and especially what she don’t (diaper changes!).

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For her birthday all the family fan club came to visit: grandparents, uncle, aunts and one great-grandparent. Wonderful gifts were received, cupcakes were eaten. She ate almost one whole chocolate with white frosting cupcake her own self, making all the appreciative gestures and sounds of one who had been deprived of sugar almost entirely up to that point. She perfected her coy little smile and head tilt, to the adoration of the paparazzi.

Now she’s getting over a bout of croup, and Dada and I are stricken with the adult version — a sucky cold. I am letting commitments slip, and not yet looking for the part-time job I grow more in need of every day. I don’t enjoy the self-imposed feeling that I ’should’ be posting to the blog about all her milestones (we also have a lovely handwritten journal I’d prefer to fill up for her). Todd may continue on his own. To me, it’s more important to just enjoy it, burn it into my memory and photos, and spend less time on the computer.

Every morning, she awakes us with her smiles, playing in our bed until she demands to get down and get busy already. It’s another day!

– Lisa

So I just got a call on my cellphone from Violet.

Usually when I answer a call from home to Violet’s voice, it’s Lisa calling and holding the phone up for Violet to “say hi to da-da!”. Today, Violet got hold of one of our cordless phones and (apparently) last-number-redialed me. When I answered my phone, I heard squeals of delight and I figured Lisa was helping Violet call me. I said “hello Violet” over and over again waiting for Lisa to take the phone and tell me what the two of them were up to. After a minute or so of talking to Violet like this I was beginning to wonder what was up. I could tell I was on speaker too (because the phone would mute when I spoke, preventing feedback). I guess Lisa heard “someone in the other room” (me, talking to V) and came to investigate… By the time Lisa picked up the phone, I had been chatting with Violet for a couple minutes…

The best part was when I heard her clearly say “da-da!” after I started talking to her. (Awwwww)

To the grumpy old lady on the Milwaukee Ave. bus this afternoon, who, after watching me feed V. a couple of bites of banana fresh from the grocery bag, and then watching V. obviously anxiously ask for more (but apparently I wasn’t fast enough), scowled and nodded toward me, then V., saying “She’s hungry! More!”:

The baby will be one year in a couple of weeks. How did she EVER survive without the helpful advice of perfect strangers??? Oh, the indignancy.

Perhaps she reacted so strongly because Ms. V. is also entering the busy, scrawny toddler phase with speed, has burned through her last bits of baby chub, and is eating like an omnivorous horse, though she is the picture of robust health (as I have no doubts her doc will confirm in a few weeks). Though in some cultures, apparently if you’re not fat until the age of 15, you’re not healthy. Pffft.

The last couple weeks her new game is to throw herself backwards from a seated position to lying down. She does this on the bed. After she does it, she just howls with glee.

Just finished uploading pictures from last month. Uploading pictures monthly seems to work pretty well…

–todd

Lately, Violet has taken to lifting her knees off the floor when she’s crawling around, “crawling” on her palms and feet only — what Lisa calls “bear walking”.  She especially does this to get over the wooden floor between the carpeted bits.

Aye, she’ll be a’walkin’ soon.  Yar.

–tod

Violet has cultivated the (unfortunate) habit of blowing raspberries near the end of her meals. Let me describe what I mean here. She’s not sticking her tongue out, and ‘pfffft’ing as you or I would call “giving someone the raspberries”. What she’s been doing is pursing her lips and blowing, making a raspberry sound. She blows, stops inhales, and blows again. and again. and again in quick succession.

It’s “important not to laugh, as it only encourages them”; but it’s sometimes hard not to, even when she’s covering the area around her with a fine porridge mist.

We’re not sure what she’s trying to say here — whether she’s bored, full, or she’s just having fun. It’s hard saying ‘no’ to a girl that doesn’t yet understand English, so we’ve tried turning away, shaking our heads in a disapproving way, and generally tried to express our displeasure at her actions, all while shielding ourselves from the spray and trying — really trying — not to laugh.

I’m guessing it’s all ‘just a phase’.

–tod

A few weeks ago I inaccurately reported that little Chabba was pulling herself up into a standing position.  I later issued a retraction based on corrected information.  It seems as I was a bit eager to report “progress”.

Well, I can certainly say that the girl is, for sure, performing the “pulling up” maneuver quite well, and has been for a couple weeks now.  This, of course, means that every morning we find her standing in her crib; things need to be moved to the exact center of the coffee table to avoid being made into a new toy, and the cat cannot sit on the edge of the window seat any longer.

progress…

–tod

So I’ve been working diligently on the backlog of Violet photos and have made some progress. Pictures from July are now online. Stay tuned for August….

– tod