Eleven Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are eleven months old, now! It has been a really busy month in the Wakeman household. So much so, that I am tempted to cheat and write your birthday letter in point form, interspersed with pictures. (Just like I did last July, when I was also too busy to write proper blog updates.)

Your physical development this month was astronomical. Once you realized that you could get around, you decided to see how much more your little body could do. You learned how to transition from crawling to sitting (June 10), and at some point, you started getting around on your hands and knees, instead of just your belly (although I don't know the exact date, because it was such a gradual transition). You pulled yourself up to a standing position for the first time on June 12, then promptly fell on your butt, cried, and didn't pull yourself up again until June 25. You love standing, though, and you'll even take a few steps if someone holds your hands.



You've always had books that you liked to chew on, but this month I think you really discovered that books have content. You love being read to, and you love reading by yourself. (You'll turn the page, say "Oh!", then turn to the next page, and say "Oh!" again. It's pretty cute.) You're trying really hard to talk, too. You mimic us all the time. I don't think you know what you're saying, but you will echo the general sound of whatever we just said, and you're getting closer and closer. (Although we stump you sometimes when we sneeze or hiccup and you can't figure out how on earth we made those noises.) Your three main words right now are "doe" (like "door" without the ending), "beu" and "geu" (like bird and girl without the endings). You don't seem to use your words to consistently refer to the same things, however, so I'm not 100% what you're trying to say. You may just still be trying out noises, but you do seem to consistently like these particular noises.



You are so much more exploratory this month, and the downside is that you'll do things like crawl over the top of your potty and do a faceplant on the other side. Then you'll cry. I've tried applauding when you fall, I've tried pretending to ignore you when you fall, I've tried laughing when you fall, but nothing seems to stop the impending tears. The only thing that helps is a great, big mommy-snuggle. So I've resigned myself to the fact that it's natural for you to be upset when you fall down, I'll snuggle you for a few minutes, then you'll squirm away and get back to your exploring. You're a pretty resilient kiddo.



Hmm, maybe I will do that point form thing after all.

First proper trip to the shore. Cape May, NJ. The gnats were really bad, and it was windy. You weren't a fan of the ocean (but I probably didn't introduce you to it gradually enough).



First trip to the shore on a proper "beach" day. Ocean City, NJ. We rode a surrey on the boardwalk. You loved playing in (and eating) the sand, but you had mixed feelings about the ocean. You were giggling hysterically, but clinging to your parents for dear life. I think you'll like roller coasters. You also met your twin second cousins for the first time, and had a lot of fun trying to keep up with them.





First Camp Meeting. Delanco Camp, NJ. I grew up going to a church camp every summer, and was starting to feel really nostalgic about my camp this year. So I found a camp on the Internet, and we went on a wing and a prayer. God blessed our efforts, and gave us an amazing week at a camp we loved and hope to go back to again.



Four teeth in one week! #5 on June 15, #6 on June 16, #7 and #8 on June 22. You saved the top, front, center teeth for last, which actually made you look strangely older to me, because you looked a bit like a kindergartener who had lost her two front teeth, rather than a baby who is getting them. I was hoping this run on teeth would mean we would get a break from teething for a few months, but you seem to have started the molar-chomping already. Sigh.





You continue to be a joy, both to us and to our friends and extended family. You don't always want to go to other people right away, but you will smile broadly at almost anyone, and you'll usually warm up to new people eventually, and allow yourself to be held. It's all about gradual transitions with you; you're not a "rip the band-aid off all at once" child. Sometimes, I start to get impatient with this gradualness, because I am totally the kind of person who dives in the deep end. But I have learned to appreciate that you always come around in your own time. You teach me new things every day, and I love how much richer my life is as your mother. You are a beautiful blessing, and I am so glad that you are my baby.

Love,
Mama.

Valerie's Wish List

Several people have started asking me what to get Valerie for her birthday, so I did what every good geek does and made an Amazon Wishlist for her.

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Iron Baby Marathon

So, at Valerie's nine-month check-up, they pricked her toe and tested her iron levels. It was 9.8, which meant nothing to me, but apparently it's slightly on the low side. The doctor said she wanted it to be at least 11, and suggested that we give Valerie supplements. Knowing that constipation is a common side effect of iron supplements, and not wanting to further exacerbate a problem that Valerie was already dealing with, I asked the doctor if we could just make sure she gets more iron in her diet. She smiled knowingly, and warned me how difficult it is to correct an iron deficiency with diet, but said that she would let me try, since 9.8 is low, but not dangerously low. We made a follow-up appointment for six weeks later, and went home and read everything there is on the Internet about iron-rich diets.

(If you ever happen to be in this situation, I'll save you a bit of googling. Start here, for the basics. Then go here for a detailed drill-down of the nutritional content of every edible thing in the universe.)

The first thing that hit me when I was doing my reading was how many iron-rich foods are associated with the opposite of constipation. Dark leafy greens, beans and legumes, bran, PRUNE JUICE. Prune juice is high in iron? Did you hear that, pregnant women around the world whose iron supplements are causing you gastrointestinal distress? Dietary iron solves both problems at once! Constipation can also be a symptom of an iron deficiency, so it makes sense from a homeopathic perspective that iron supplements often cause constipation. Like cures like, and all that. If you need the iron, supplements may fix the problem, but if you don't need them, then they can cause the problem. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this.)

All the more resolved not to give my baby iron supplements, we set to work on making sure her diet was as iron-dense as possible. We gave her beef and turkey meat (dark meat is best). We gave her all kinds of boiled greens (she loved the kale!). We gave her lentils and beans. We continued to give her sweet potatoes and avocado and broccoli, which were already some of her favorite foods. Since we are doing baby-led weaning with her (a finger foods approach to introducing solid foods), we gave her these things straight up, cooked until tender when necessary, but not blended into rice cereal or anything, and not spooned into her mouth. It was up to her to choose from all of the lovely, ironful options and eat herself healthy. If you're a control freak, then I don't recommend this method. But if you can trust nature to do its thing, then it's great. The theory behind it is that babies will give their bodies what they need, so if they need iron, they will choose to eat foods with iron. And Valerie did. She didn't like everything we offered her, and one day she would eat a whole leaf of kale only to ignore it completely the next day and go for the sweet potato instead, but overall, she seemed to be doing a pretty good job at filling her belly with the right kinds of things.



Today was her six-week hemoglobin check, which was probably in the appointment book as "prove to this crazy mom that she can't possibly feed her baby enough red meat to raise her iron levels and write her a prescription for iron supplements." And honestly, I wasn't even convinced that iron-loading Valerie's diet would have done the trick, and I was just hoping that her iron levels would have at least stayed the same, and not have gone down. I knew we had done our best, and I was happy to have discovered the many health benefits of prune juice if nothing else. The nurse took Valerie's blood, then went into the other room to check it. We could hear her exclamation of joy through the walls, and the doctor came in and told us that it had gone up to 12.2! Hooray for overachieving! I have to tell you, the best words in the world to hear your doctor say are, "Keep on doing what you're doing."

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A few tips and tricks for parents who might want to iron-load their babies' diets:
-Make sure you give your baby a mix of heme and non-heme iron, to increase absorption. Vitamin C also improves iron absorption, which you can get from all kinds of melon. Just cut finger-shaped strips of ripe melon for the baby to gnaw on.
-Edamame (soy beans) are soft enough to chew without teeth. I was able to get them from Trader Joe's pre-cooked and pre-peeled, and I would just give them to Valerie cold. (Pictured in the center of Valerie's tray in the above picture.)
-Roll anything slippery (like avocado or fruit) in wheat germ. It makes it easier to grip, and adds iron.
-Prune jello jigglers! It sounds silly, but this was one of Valerie's favorite iron-rich foods. Just sprinkle a packet of plain, unflavored gelatin on top of 1/2 cup of cold prune juice. Let it sit for one minute, then add 1/2 cup of boiling water and stir for a few minutes until completely dissolved. Add one tablespoon of blackstrap molasses (also high in iron!), then pour into a small rectangular dish (I used a Chinese take-out container) and refrigerate overnight. Cut into little rectangular cubes for the baby to enjoy! (Pictured on the right-hand side of the above picture.)
-Prune pancakes! Pancakes are a great finger food for babies, because they are soft and gummable, but firm enough to pick up. I prefer to make pancakes from scratch, but when I am feeling lazy, I use an "add water" mix. But I add prune juice instead of water! Valerie loved her prunecakes. Sometimes, I would mix some wheat germ or cooked greens into the batter, too, for added iron. (Pictured on the left-hand side of the above picture.)
-Big beans, like kidney beans, worked great on their own, but Valerie had a little more trouble picking up little things like lentils (which I really wanted to use, because they had the highest iron content). So, I made a yummy baked lentil dish (from the More With Less cookbook), then I mixed the lentils with some sushi rice to make little patties that she could pick up easily. I wish I had thought of rolling them in wheat germ, too, that would have been perfect.
-I never got around to trying this last one, but I will once my avocados ripen! Seaweed is very high in iron, and a friend of mine suggested making baby-sized California rolls with just avocado in the middle. What a great idea!
-Do you have any other ideas for iron-rich finger foods? Share them in the comments!

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Ten Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are ten months old now! This month seems to have completely flown by. Maybe it's because it was such a busy, eventful month. Or maybe it's just because I took so long writing last month's birthday letter.

Unlike last month, this month was full of milestones. You cut your third tooth (May 16) and your fourth tooth (May 29). It's funny, because you have four teeth now, but none of them meet in the middle. Tooth number three came in on top, but off to one side, and tooth number four came in on the bottom, but off to the other side. It's not funny in a bad way, though. It's funny in a really unique, adorable way.



You learned how to clap this month (May 26), and you take absolute delight in the attention you get when we clap for you, and you clap back to us. You've gotten quite efficient at crawling on your belly, and you'll even rock up onto your hands and knees and almost crawl a few times before dropping back to your belly and settling into the method you know works, for now. You've also learned to transition from a sitting position to a crawling position, and the combination of these things made it extremely difficult for me to get a birthday picture I was happy with this month. I would sit you up, with no toys nearby to detract from the photograph, and you would immediately drop to your belly and crawl away to a more interesting place. In order to distract you from crawling away, I would clap, and you would get excited enough about clapping to not crawl away, but then I couldn't get you to stop clapping and just smile for the camera. Oh well, I can't complain too much, when my photography problems are of such an adorable nature.







You learned to sign this month, which is not only fun, but also opens up a whole new world of communication for us. You first did the sign for "milk" on May 16, and you have since also signed "all done" and "more". You bang on the table when you're thirsty, but I'm not willing to call that a "sign" even though I know what you mean, because I would much rather you find a way to communicate that particular need more gently. As soon as you started signing, I realized that I didn't know enough signs myself, and I felt bad for not introducing you to more signs before. We're trying to do more signs for you now, but you seem to have become impatient with us, and have started to make up your own signs. Once you figured out that you could talk with your hands, you started to "babble" with your fingers, wiggling them deliberately as if to say, "Is this a word? How about this?" One day, when you wanted me to turn on your mobile, you pointed at it, then made a little circle with your fingers, which I thought was pretty clever, especially since I had never signed "mobile" or "turn it on" to you before.



You're also becoming increasingly verbal. You've been saying "dadadada" for a while, but you never seemed to directly associate the sounds with any particular person, it was just your newest sound to make for a while. But gradually, you started to use a string of da's to refer to your parents, and then, once you added "ma" to your vocabulary, you started to distinguish between the two, and use a string of da's for daddy, and a string of ma's for mommy. It's not exactly words yet, but person-specific sounds are pretty word-like in my books. Within the last week or so, you have also added "na" to your vocabulary, and just today, you distinctly said "Nana" when your Nana walked into the room. But that's technically a spoiler for next month's birthday letter, because you turned ten months old yesterday. Oops.



This month was very full on the external events front as well. We had our first Mother's Day together, and your gift to me was that you let me take a very, very long nap. And honestly, I don't think I could have appreciated any other gift as much as that. We took our first trip to the shore together, but it was too windy to do much on the actual beach, other than run our fingers through the sand for a few minutes before heading back indoors. We'll take more trips to the shore, though, I promise. Jeremy's cousin got married this month, and you loved dancing with me in the sling at the reception, and you didn't complain too much when we didn't get home until after midnight. We have a pool membership for the summer at the pool where Nana and PopPop and the great-cousins all go, and we took our first trip to the pool this month, as well. It was incredibly warm on Memorial Day weekend, and once I figured out that I had to let you get wet really, really gradually, you ended up absolutely loving the pool, and staying in the water with me for over an hour.



We went on our first family camping trip, to a forest in Virginia where we stayed in a cabin and Mommy and Daddy played role-playing games all weekend. You had a great time at Camp Nerdly. You were surprisingly content to hang out and play with your toys while I played games with my friends, and you managed to win over many gamers who had been wary of the prospect of having a baby on the camping trip. And just this past week, we had two sets of houseguests, and you absolutely loved all the attention. You especially loved having a temporary big sister and little brother. You and Leo, who is seven months old, would sit on the floor together, and hold hands, or trade toys, or roll over on top of each other, and just generally show friendship in a way that only babies can. It was a great visit, and I was sad to see our friends leave. At least you'll get to see my Uncle Keith and Aunt Sharon again in a few weeks when then stop back in on their way home.



Honestly, though, I think the thing that changed the most this month was me. I finally went shopping and bought clothes that fit me, the way my body is right now, rather than how it used to be, or how it might hopefully be again someday. I love being your mommy, but I haven't loved every change that has happened to me over the past 18 months or so, and it was a big step for me to finally say, okay, this is who I am right now, and I am going to be content in this skin. One day this month, I was sorting laundry, and as I was making piles to put away, I noticed that I was thinking, "Okay, this is Valerie's pile, and this is Mummy's pile, and this is Daddy's pile." And it dawned on me that I was thinking of myself, in my own head, in the third person, as "Mummy". (Or Mommy, or Mama. On this occasion, however, my Canadian childhood was definitely poking through with "Mummy." It sounds better when I say it than when I type it, though.) They say that you are truly bilingual when you start to count in your head in your second language, and I think the same logic applies here. My life changed completely the day I had you, but now my identity has followed suit as well. I haven't stopped being Jule Ann, but I am now wholeheartedly "Mummy".

Love,
Mummy

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This is why I'm a bad blogger

This is my Memorial Day weekend, in point form, to demonstrate part of why I am terrible at blogging.

-Thursday morning, work at 5
-Thursday afternoon/evening, spend time with Jer's parents and grandparents (who are visiting from out of town), dinner at Ruby Tuesday's
-Friday morning, work at 5
-Friday afternoon, necessary nap
-Friday evening, Jer's cousin's wedding, 90 minutes away. Home after midnight.
-Saturday morning, sleep in a little bit
-Saturday afternoon, picnic in the park, volleyball
-Saturday evening, dinner with Jer's parents and grandparents
-Sunday morning, church, get there early to drum with the worship team
-Sunday afternoon, necessary nap
-Sunday night, go out for a coworker's birthday, home after 2
-Monday morning, work at 5:30
-Monday afternoon, family barbecue
-Monday evening, gaming until well after midnight
-Tuesday, no work, collapse into a quivering mass of recovery.

It sure was fun, though, but who has time to blog in the midst of all that? On the upside Jer has finally finished the massive computer project that he was working on that was preventing me from uploading and editing photos and videos. So, I can finally post pictures again! On the downside, I now have 60 minutes of video clips and 3.5 gigs of photos to sort through. I may find time next month. Maybe.

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A passel of partial posts

I've had thin, fine, straight hair my entire life. Now, crazy hormones are making it get thicker and curvier. Of course, it's not making nice, pretty curls, though. It's made two random kinks in useless places, and I just look like I've been wearing a tight hat or something.

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Valerie cut a tooth today. It's on the top, right, but not in the middle. Is it weird to get side teeth before middle teeth?

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For several months, we have been using sign language with Valerie. We don't do very many signs, but I have been fairly consistently doing "mommy" and "milk" when I ask her if she wants to nurse. This morning, she quite clearly made the sign for milk, so I nursed her. We were both pleased. She made her first sign! She gave me milk! Then, she kept making the "milk" sign all day, for "pick me up", for "I want my mommy", for "wet diaper", etc. I think she's just super excited at learning her first word, and now she wants to use it for everything. Or she made the sign by accident, and got super excited at how much attention I gave her for doing it, and wanted to keep getting that attention. Either way, it's still really cute!

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Quick Note

Okay, so I finally finished Valerie's monthly letter, which I started writing a week ago. I didn't realize that Blogger would post it backdated to the date I started it, though, so it showed up behind the other two posts that I wrote between then and now. So, if you're looking for the nine month letter, you can find it here.

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Mother's Day: A Two-Thousand-Word Essay

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Computers

Computers. Bah.

I used to be very lucky with computers. My first laptop, a 1997 Toshiba brick, lasted me for four years, until it was stolen. Its replacement (which I count as the same computer, because the insurance paid for it) lasted me for six more years. In ten years, I only had to buy one computer. That's a pretty good track record.

At some point, Jeremy convinced me to put Linux on my laptop, and in spite of my initial frustrations, I eventually got used to it, and even came to like it. I'm not a typical Linux user, though, because I don't care about what's new and exciting. I just want a basic computer where I can find what I want, do what I want, and not have my computer freeze all the time. If there was something I wanted my computer to do that it didn't do, I would describe it to Jeremy, and he would eventually get my computer to do it for me. (Usually. Apparently, the things that I think are basic and simple are often ridiculously complicated.) That computer kicked the bucket about two years ago. I'd like to blame Linux, but really, I think Linux was its life support, dragging it out for several years of life past its natural lifespan. So I can't complain too much.

When we replaced that laptop, Jeremy was on a relatively short-lived mac kick. So, I got a refurbished iBook. It was great except for that little line on the screen, and the tendency for the screen to invert colors when it was at the wrong angle. But those little screen problems kept on getting worse until one day, it just went black. Poof. Display gone. In less than a year.

Apparently, you can't fix an iBook screen for anything like a reasonable price, so that was the end of that. I had Jer set up his extra desktop in the living room for me, but I really missed having the mobility of a laptop. I was given a hand-me-down ThinkPad (fourth-hand, I think?), which is great for 90% of what I do on a computer - email and reading blogs - but doesn't really have the speed for things like editing pictures and videos. But Jer liked having a desktop in the living room, anyhow, so the desktop stayed, and I use it for photos and videos, and do everything else on my laptop.

But then Jeremy, who is a typical Linux user, decided to install a new version of Linux on the desktop, even though the one it was running was perfectly fine. And the next time I tried to use it, the photo software crashed. And the time after that, and the time after that. I really wanted to post pictures from our trip to Virginia last month, but I couldn't get the photos to upload. And while it only takes a day to make Linux stop working correctly, apparently it takes a month to get it working correctly again. Or more.

So, I am trying to get Valerie's monthly letter written, but most of this month's photos are still on the camera. Fortunately, I have a spare memory card, so I'm still able to take pictures, but the prospect of sorting through them all just gets more and more daunting every day. I finally broke down and started uploading some of them to my laptop, but it's really testing its processor's limits. And my patience's.

Monthly letter coming soon. I hope.

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Nine Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are nine months old, now! Most moms would probably make some kind of comment at this point about "being out as long as you were in", but that wouldn't be true in your case. You were born early, so you've already been "out" three weeks longer than you were "in", and that particular milestone passed unnoticed before I thought to do the math.



Maybe it's just in contrast to last month's lousiness, but this month was really fun. You didn't hit any major, obvious milestones (like cutting new teeth or saying your first words), but you blossomed so much that it's hard to think of you as a baby anymore. You've become a little person. You don't quite say words yet, but you are very communicative. You babble conversationally, and sometimes, it really sounds like you're speaking. If the adults are having a conversation that doesn't include you, you will voice your opinion on the subject, loudly if necessary. You occasionally repeat sounds that we make, especially musical ones. Sometimes you even match our pitch. You love music. If the TV is on, you will turn and give it your full attention during (and ONLY during) the opening credits. Once the music is over, you will go back to whatever you were doing before. The best part about this is that the opening credits to The Office or Doctor Who are just as entertaining to you as the opening credits to Elmo's World, so we can escape annoying children's programming for a little longer at least.

You also love percussion, and will drum on any remotely drum-like surface that you can get your hands on. Board books are great for this. Your favorite toys are the ones with rattles inside, and you shake them with surprisingly good rhythm. This is nothing new, however; when I was pregnant with you I played the drums in church, and you used to kick me rhythmically when I was done.

Perhaps the most exciting development this month has been your capacity for independent play. Once you outgrew your swing, that was pretty much the end of me being able to put you down and keep you happy for long enough to do a load of dishes. I would try and put you down with some toys to buy a few moments to, say, run to the bathroom, but it would only last for two or three minutes at most. But this month, that all changed. You can sit on the floor surrounded by toys and keep yourself amused for a half hour or more. You actually want me to put you down sometimes.



I think your newfound contentedness on the floor has everything to do with your rapidly developing mobility. Whether it is a cause or an effect, I don't know for sure. Maybe you're more content on the floor because you can wiggle your way over to new and exciting contraband, or maybe you started wiggling your way around the room because you were spending more time on the floor, where pieces of paper and extension cords were enticing you to come and put them in your mouth. Either way, you definitely don't stay where I put you anymore. You still don't exactly crawl, but you can squirm around in circles, roll across the room, and wriggle over to whatever you are trying to reach. Usually, when you try to crawl, you just move backwards, but recently, you've actually made some forward progress, commando-style, on your belly. You haven't quite grasped the "hands and knees" thing yet, but you will push down on your toes until your bum is high in the air. It doesn't get you anywhere, but it's awfully cute.



We took you to Virginia for a wedding this month, and it really couldn't have gone better. You slept in a different bed, met lots of different people, stayed out late with mommy and daddy while they socialized, ate Ethiopian food, met a sheep, and wooed everyone with your general good-baby-ness. I was so proud of you. I know sometimes I hear other moms talk about their babies who take two naps a day and go to bed at 8:00 pm every night, and sometimes I almost wish my baby was like that. But then I think about times like our trip to Virginia, and I take back my almost-wish. I honestly can't imagine having to rush home to get you to bed on time. When you're tired, you'll just fall asleep, wherever, whenever, and you'll sleep till you're not tired anymore. So what if I can't count on that hour in the afternoon every day to do the laundry. I'm not very good at living on too tight of a schedule, anyhow; we like to fly by the seat of our pants in this family. I'm so grateful that you do, too.



I had many more things that I wanted to talk about in this letter, but I feel like this letter is already on its way to being too long. I was going to talk about all the things you do with your feet - how you rattle your plastic links with your toes, how you will use your feet to brace a book that you want to look at, and how you can even get your big toe into your mouth if the mood strikes you.



I was going to talk about how you passed the 20 pound mark this month, and how you're still in the 95th percentile for height. I was going to talk about how much you love to feed yourself finger foods, and how you can polish off an entire avocado in one sitting. I was going to talk about how much you hate to poop in your diaper, so we bought you a potty to poop in, and you actually use it (with a little help, of course). But if I said all the things I wanted to say, you'll be ten months old before this letter is finished. So let me just say, Valerie, I love you; thanks for a really good month.

Love,
Mama

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