Cerin Amroth

We’re back from a week on Hatteras Island with our friends Joe, Julia, Chad, and Susie. The kid we brought back with us definitely seems more than just a week older than when we left. The first couple pictures are pre-OBX.

“120″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella120.jpg — Ella loves being upside-down. She’s also partial to being bounced on the bed and tossed in the air. A future bungie-jumper, for sure.
“121″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella121.jpg — Ella in an outfit from India — a gift from our friend Theressa.
“122″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella122.jpg — The “aforementioned”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/05/the_exersaucer.html Exersaucer. By week’s end Ella was deliberately pressing the button to make the jangly noises, instead of flailing her arms in its general direction and hoping for success. It was a big pain in the butt to cram it into the car, but it was worth it.
“123″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella123.jpg — Arm-supported sitting-up is a regular occurence nowadays, and it’s balance, not strength, that prevents her from sitting without any support at all. The biggest perk of this stage is that she can go in high chairs in restaurants, so we don’t always have to cart around her car seat or stroller to put her in.
“124″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella124.jpg — Here’s Ella and her mama getting back from a walk on the beach.
“125″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella125.jpg — And here’s Ella’s daddy teaching her, um, hand-eye coordination and fundamental digital interactive conceptual metaphor apprehension. Important developmental skills.
“126″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella126.jpg — Aspiring yogis take note: Ella held this position for all of dinner one night. Apparently it was very comfortable.
“127″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella127.jpg — As Joe put it, Julia and Ella have a mutual admiration society going on. Sitting with Julia, with a plastic cup in hand, is pretty close to paradise as far as Ella is concerned. Incidentally, she is obsessed with drinking from cups, which has created all sorts of close-call situations with coffee. When we let her try to gulp down some water, she’ll inevitably gulp down too much and splutter it down her chest and cough. But that in no way deters her from reaching for the cup right away again.
“128″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella128.jpg — Julia may get more smiles, but Joe definitely wins Ella’s Most Fun Face to Touch award.
“129″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella129.jpg — Chad, Ella, Herr Duck. Somehow it reminds me of American Gothic.
“130″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella130.jpg — Here’s Susie encroaching on Ella’s Exersaucer territory.
“131″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella131.jpg — What’s transfixing Ella off-camera is a bluegrass band playing at the Pickled Steamer, our favorite OBX restaurant. Between songs, the bassist declared Ella “the dancingist baby I ever seen.” Granted, that was mostly me bouncing her up and down on my knee, but she’ll be dancing by herself soon enough.
“132″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella132.jpg — “But your Majesties, that’s _shocking_! What will your subjects say?”
“133″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella133.jpg — Mother and daughter.

After a 6-hour car ride home from a weeklong vacation in the Outerbanks, there are 2 things that can be certain:

* Ella does not like 6 hours of her carseat; and
* Ella definitely recognizes home.

Her first reaction upon arrival was a mixture of the two. We pulled up to unload things at the front door. I took out her Baby Bjorn to carry her in while we were taking things up in the elevator. Ella was still strapped in to her carseat. When she saw the Bjorn, she kicked her legs, waived her arms, and smiled from ear to ear. She couldn’t have been happier at the prospect of getting out of the carseat.

I’m not sure she recognized the front entryway of our building specifically, but she definitely recognized our apartment. I put her in the bouncy seat while we carried things from the elevator. She sat in her seat squealing, kicking her feet, and waiving her arms. Later when I put her on the changing pad to check her diaper, she again started the kicking, waiving, and squealing.

I believe she had a good time on our vacation, and certainly loved all the attention from our friends, but home is clearly where she likes to be. She was very quiet and attentive when I stood with her at the window surveying the neighborhood below. Everything is in its right place, and she is back in charge. … Good thing she didn’t understand me when I said we leave for New Orleans on Thursday!

Ella has always been particular about the temperature of her food. Taking a bottle straight of the fridge is completely out of the question; there’s a range of 5-10 degrees that’s acceptable, ranging from “tepid” to “decently warm,” but not, of course, “hot.” At home this is a simple matter of warming up bottles on the stove, but it’s created all sorts of difficulties abroad, especially when the only recourse is to heat the bottle under a faucet streaming hot water (which takes _forever_).

She has just taken her finicky tastes to another level, though. Up until now rice cereal was fine with her at room temperature, but yesterday she would have none of it — she winced when I scooped it into her mouth, and, after letting it sit there for a second, opened her mouth and made gagging sounds until some of it fell out. The rest she swallowed with a grumpy expression on her face. When she was pulling the same act today, I tried microwaving the rice cereal for ten seconds — and after that, I couldn’t spoon it to her fast enough.

Mind you, she’d been eating tepid rice cereal for _weeks_ — she just up and decided yesterday that it wasn’t good enough for her any more.

I shouldn’t complain — she actually likes rice cereal if it’s warm enough, and that’s a miracle in itself.

You know how, when your child is sleeping, even though you know perfectly well that she’s all right, you nevertheless are compelled to watch her to make sure that she’s alive and, if need be, place your hand on her — ever so gently — in order to reassure yourself with the soft rise and fall of her breath –

Does that ever go away?

Now that’s Ella’s in her full-on “grabby stage”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/06/ella_at_six_mon.html, we got her an Exersaucer to help occupy her ever-wandering hands. The Exersaucer is a plastic monstrosity that was a pain in the butt to put together, adorned with a seizure-inducing number of doodads that she can reach while rotating herself in the middle. But in our particular Exersaucer the doodads are all removable, plus, it has a “castle” theme. (No dragons, but there _is_ a roasted boar on a spit — how cool is that?)

Ella’s response to the Exersaucer has been, to say the least, ecstatic. The first time we put her in there she was flailing with joy like a kid in a candy store, paralyzed by the inability to decide what to grab for first. Now that she’s had a few sessions with it she has her favorite doodads, but still likes to rotate gradually around the thing, giving each one its due. She’s doing so as I write this, and every couple of minutes she’ll look my way and give me a big smile, as if to say, “I’m so freakin’ _lucky_!”

Actually, right now she has located one of the doodads that she can’t reach with her mouth — the king & queen on a pedestal who’d be able to play music if they had a battery — and she’s craning with all her might to try to swallow them up. She’s even holding on to the jester jangly thing to get a bit of extra leverage. No luck, though — they’re just too far away. Now she’s fallen back to Plan B: sucking all of her fingers simultaneously.

From the sidelines, Frank the firefly, Herr Duck, Flower Dude, and the Box of Fun all look on jealously. How can they compete with the glory of the saucer? At night, while we sleep, they contemplate their revenge . . .

At the -bottom- top of the Archives section of the sidebar, to the right, you’ll now find a “link”:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/index.html to all the pictures that have appeared on Cerin Amroth, in a nifty thumbnailed web album format. This was made possible by a nifty piece of free software called “Jalbum”:http://jalbum.net/ — thanks for the tip, Eric!

There’s a lot of Ella pics up here now, and no good way to view old ones other than hunting out the relevant entries in the archives. Does anyone know of a handy perl script or such that would take all the pics in a certain subdirectory, say, and spit out an html page with an index of them? Maybe even with thumbnails? I looked for a Movable Type plugin with that kind of functionality, but no dice. Tips/pointers would be appreciated.

Some more West Michigan pics, followed by ones from the Brandywine Valley this past weekend.

“108″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella108.jpg — The one on the left, i.e. the one with hair, is Meg. Just prior to this picture, Meg’s mom was talking about how Meg never really did the whole pacifier thing.
“109″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella109.jpg & “110″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella110.jpg — Ella chillin’ with her great-grandparents.
“111″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella111.jpg — Mar Mar and great-aunt Shirley wanted to be in on the whole feeding thing, so we let them give her rice cereal for a while. You know how gerbils will keep eating and eating sunflower seeds until they explode? That didn’t happen here, but she ate a _lot_ of rice cereal.
“112″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella112.jpg — Somehow, it doesn’t _feel_ like someone’s reading over my shoulder when she does it . . .
“113″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella113.jpg — Mother and daughter ready for a springtime jaunt.
“114″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella114.jpg — At the time this picture was taken, sitting-up-with-arm-support was big news. As milestones go, it’s been superseded. She still enjoys sitting like this, though she finds it positively hilarious when she slumps to one side or the other and bonks her head. She also finds it hilarious to be held upside-down, incidentally. I see bungee-jumping in her future.
“115″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella115.jpg — Considering the lilies at Longwood Gardens. If those are lilies.
“116″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella116.jpg — Also at Longwood, under the willow tree.
“117″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella117.jpg — On the whole walk from the willow tree back to the car, she wouldn’t let go of her hat.
“118″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella118.jpg — As Suanna mentioned, this weekend was the beginning of the Age of Grabbiness. She never paid any attention to any drinking vessel other than her bottle before this, but at her very first wine tasting she wanted nothing more than to hold the glass herself. And lest you think it was just a matter of her being interested in the object and not the contents, I beg you to consider . . .
“119″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella119.jpg — . . . this.

It’s official: we have Roll-Over.

Suanna had the first sighting last night while I was out getting groceries, and today she’s been flipping over every chance she gets. So far it’s just front-to-back. This is funny because for the past few weeks she’s been working on back-to-front, and then all of a sudden she does it the other way like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I suspect the reason is that she still doesn’t particularly like being on her tummy. Now there’s going to be no keeping her there.

Seemingly overnight, Ella has entered the world of the busy baby. Just days ago, she was content to bring the world to her mouth when it dangled directly in front of her face. Now, she is reaching out for it – trusting that we will catch her before she falls. Gone are the days of allowing her to sit on our lap at the restaurant when she tires of her carseat. We have to prep the table for her appearance, pushing everything out of arms length and putting something touchable and – most importantly – chewable and suckable infront of her. I remember watching the moms who had to be constantly pulling something new out of the diaper bag to keep their children occupied. Now those toys are nearly as important as the diapers and burp cloths. I must say that this new phase – challenging though it certainly is – is very enjoyable.

Today marks the first day that Mother’s Day has new meaning. Nate and I decided to celebrate the parents’ holidays in low key fashion. Rather than gifts, we are going to try to make it special by doing something nice. This happened to be the weekend we chose to spend in the Brandywine Valley because I had a work meeting in Philadelphia. So the first Mother’s Day was very memorable – Wyeth art in the morning and wine tastings in the afternoon. Nate’s something nice – beside many adoring looks – was willingly browsing through an antique shop after lunch with absolutely no pressure to make it quick.

On Friday, my boss said “Happy Mother’s Day” before leaving for the weekend. It was the first time I heard it said aloud, and it felt good. This holiday is nice if for no other reason than to have an excuse to publicly acknowledge women who have chosen to bring new life into the world. I got several well wishes throughout the day, and also had the opportunity to give a few myself. The best thing in the world, though, is that big toothless grin I get every morning from Elanora. One day of that would be enough for a whole lifetime. Fortunately, that’s not a trade off I have to make.