Cerin Amroth

“166″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella166.jpg — Another picture in the book lover series. She really does seem to fascinated with books as objects, though I think a big part of it is that she senses they are chock full of nice, rippable paper.
“167″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella167.jpg — When Babies Attack . . . Their Grandmothers! Actually, the Slobbery Nose Bite is one of Ella’s dearest signs of affection; it might be her interpretation of a kiss. When she goes for your nose, you know she likes you.
“168″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella168.jpg — This is one of many great pictures (if I do say so myself) taken during a sudden thunderstorm, under the shelter of Harvard’s Memorial Hall. It’s the only really good one of Ella, though.
“169″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella169.jpg — Mama and Ella relaxing in the hotel room.
“170″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella170.jpg — Future rock climber?
“171″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella171.jpg — We felt it was important to document Ella’s first run-in with Thoreau. I’m sure they’ll meet again.
“172″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella172.jpg — Kicking back at an ice cream shop in Concord.
“173″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella173.jpg — Here we have Ella clapping at one of the geese at Boston Common. For the first few days after she learned to clap, it seemed like that’s all she was ever going to do — she’d clap all the time, even in circumstances where she used to wave. Since then, clapping has settled into its proper place in her repertoire.
“174″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella174.jpg — Ella with Aunt Kate, Aunt Sarah, and Mama.
“175″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella175.jpg — Witness the havoc Ella was able to make once she “learned to scooch”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/08/the_scooch.html.

Ella has been on the cusp of crawling for over a month now, and just today accomplished her first sustained crawl-like maneuver.

Her problem has always been getting to all fours from a seated position. She’d lean forward to place her hands on the ground, and one foot would be pointing back and braced against the floor, but the other leg would still be stuck crosswise underneath her, and she could never get the hang of pushing over it or forcing it back or wriggling around it in order to start the crawl.

So over the weekend, she decided that it just didn’t matter. When executing the Scooch, she leans forward onto her hands, nudges the stuck leg up a little, then pushes with her other leg as far forward as she can, nudges the stuck leg again, and repeats. It’s not exactly _efficient_ locomotion, but she’s fairly pleased with herself. Shortly after getting the hang of it she scooched over to the TV and yanked out all the DVDs stacked on the shelf beneath it. I watched as she carelessly arrayed them around her, gnawed on the corners of the packages, and let out peals of delight when she discovered packages that opened like books. When she ripped the cover of the booklet from my _Fellowship of the Ring_ extended DVD, I was reminded once again that we have quite a bit of childproofing to do.

It remains to be seen to what extent the Scooch will catch on. So far she’s only used it to make a beeline for desired objects, not for generic exploration. And she’s still way more interested in standing. But at this point, even realizing what a handful she’ll be, I’m looking forward to her continuing discoveries in self-locomotion. Right now when she’s standing alongside the futon and sick of it, she’ll start to whine instead of plopping down on her butt, turning, and going somewhere else.

Incidentally, I wasn’t able to find a standard spelling of ’scooch,’ because it’s not a word in English. I decided against ’scootch’ or ’skootch’ because the ‘t’, while retro, isn’t really necessary. On purely aesthetic grounds I tend to prefer ’skooch’ — you just don’t see that good ol’ hard ‘k’ enough in our language, what with ‘c’ always horning in on its territory. But I decided on ’scooch’ nevertheless, because of its similarity to ’scoot,’ which lends the word some consistency and coherence.

This afternoon, a gentleman from the government came by the apartment to interview me concerning a friend’s security clearance. I warned him that my baby daughter would be on hand, but he didn’t seem to think that would be a problem. How wrong he was.

I put Ella in the Exersaucer just before he arrived, and after she had torn the castle down, she started bouncing up and down happily. But when the g-man walked in, she froze and stared at him, rapt with curiosity. In retrospect it’s understandable — he was the first person to enter the apartment who we haven’t made a point of introducing her to, and who hasn’t immediately lavished her with attention. Instead, he and I sat down and he started asking me questions.

For the next fifteen minutes, Ella didn’t move an inch. She stood there in Exersaucer, her jaw hanging slightly open, her unflinching gaze fixed on the strange guest.

I don’t think he noticed at first, but after a few minutes, he glanced her way and chuckled at the attention, but then got right back to the questions — he was all business. A few minutes after that, he looked back in her direction, and when he realized that she was still staring at him, and had probably done little else in the intervening time, he smiled, though not very convincingly, and adjusted his seat. He seemed a little disconcerted. For the last five minutes of the interview, he periodically glanced up to verify that yes, indeed, she was still staring at him. At one point he even paused to compose himself in between questions.

I could imagine what was going on in his head. Any normal person would have broken the ice by exclaiming “what an attentive baby!” or something like that, but clearly that wouldn’t have been businesslike or professional enough for him. The other alternative: “Could you move your baby somewhere else, sir, she’s totally freaking me out,” would have displayed weakness. So all the guy had left was awkward smiles. I’m pretty sure he cut the interview short just so he could get the heck out of there. As soon as he was gone, Ella glanced at me, said “BA GA,” and resumed bouncing up and down in the Exersaucer.

Ella has been enjoying the attention of two grandparents and two aunts this weekend in Lexington, outside of Boston. As often is the case, travel has triggered a couple milestones:

Just this morning, she learned to clap. This was brought on by concerted peer pressure — four people surrounding her and clapping happily, then pressing her own hands together — but it worked, and she’s spent the rest of the day applauding at every opportunity. When she’s a bit shy about it she’ll clap with one finger stuck in her mouth, which is mind-numbingly cute.

She has entered the dreaded Clingy Phase. It’s partly to do with unfamiliar surroundings, no doubt, but Ella has enjoyed interacting with her relatives — as long as she is in reaching distance of Suanna or I at all times. The prospect of being separated from us by more than a few feet is unpleasant, to the say the least, unless she’s in the Baby Bjorn. Being held by non-parental entities is also suspect, now, unless the person in question has Cheerios or a bottle for her. I’ll be curious to see if all this holds true when she’s back on home turf.

Ella can barely be bothered to sleep during the weekend. Saturday and Sunday, she’ll skip naps, or take short ones, or let a little car catnap count instead of a real one. She’ll stay up later and fuss more when we try to put her down.

There are two reasons for this that I can see: first and foremost, Suanna is around all the time on the weekends, and Ella really likes spending time with her Mama. Second, we tend to go out more on the weekends, so there’s many more people to see and places to go.

This past weekend was a perfect example. We were out most of the time both Saturday and Sunday, and she barely slept all weekend, or at least it felt that way. But now today, when it’s back to just her and me, she’s catching up on her lost sleep and recovering from her raucous weekend. She took a ninety minute nap this morning — an unheard-of length for her — and is currently on her second nap since then.

It’s inevitable that I’ll be steeped in children’s literature over the next several years, so I’m taking it slow and resisting the urge to read ahead. There’s stuff on the shelf that I’m eager to look at, like _Frog Went A’Courtin’_ and _The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone_, but I figure Ella will want that stuff read to her plenty when she reaches the right age, so no sense in getting my fill of it now.

This means that my current exposure is limited to board books. Ella doesn’t exactly take a literary approach to them yet, but neither does she view them solely as chew toys. Heck, I don’t know if she’s even paying attention to the pictures, but she does enjoy the ritual of page turning accompanied by the cadence of my voice. The thing is, even if she’s not particularly picky yet, _I_ am — I have to _read_ the dang stuff. Our self-selected board books (like Seuss and Boynton — more on her later) are fine, but amid the gifts and other random acquisitions are many, many duds. The following is not an exhaustive list of problematic material, merely some examples that illustrate the most common problems:

_Rub-a-dub, Pooh_ — This square, squat little book features the Disneyfied versions of the characters playing in a puddle and engaging in related hilarity. I prefer Ernest Shepard’s drawings, but that’s not the issue here. Turn on your poetry ear and read the following lines:

Rooh and Pooh
just love to play!
Jumping in
puddles is fun . . .

When Roo asks Pooh
to spend the night,
there’s washing-up
to be done!

Apparently, when it comes to kids, meter only matters in the first half of each stanza. It’s not like I’m looking for the supple iambs of a good sonnet, here, just adherence to a basic pattern of stresses. But apparently the author can’t be bothered to muster the effort.

_Curious George’s “Are You Curious?”_ — I pulled this one off the shelf one day full of hope, because hey, Curious George rocks. But this little board book is little more than a lame attempt to spin some more money off the property. It features illustrations from the classic books, each one accompanied (without even an attempt at verse) by questions: Are you curious? Are you hungry? Are you dizzy? No coherence, no story. The last thing I want to do is spoil Ella’s first exposure to those fine illustrations by presenting them out of any meaningful context.

_Classic Nursery Rhymes_ — This little monstrosity is a box containing six square board books and a CD. Apparently, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” now counts as a classic nursery rhyme, but that’s a minor offense. Their version of “Humpty Dumpty” features some competent drawings, but right when you get to the failure of all the king’s horses and men, the tale goes on! The next pages contain (I am not making this up):

Along came the children
with brushes and glue
And stuck him together
as good as new

Well, it _scans_ until the fourth line, let’s give it that. But it also demolishes all the _bite_ of the original. I will never understand this persistent desire to eradicate tragedy and sorrow from nursery rhymes, folk tales, and children’s literature in general. What do people think they’re shielding them from? Kids get the fact that bad things happen in the world easily enough, and the most morbid folk tale has nothing on what they’re able to imagine lurking under the bed all by themselves.

Humpty Dumpty has an illustrious history. Here’s a plausible-sounding “explanation”:http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/humpty.asp for its origin:

Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon during the English Civil War (1642-49).
It was mounted on top of the St Mary’s at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. (Although Colchester was a Parliamentarian stronghold, it had been captured by the Royalists and they held it for 11 weeks.) The church tower was hit by the enemy and the top of the tower was blown off, sending “Humpty” tumbling to the ground. Naturally the King’s men tried to mend him but in vain. NB: The “men” would have been infantry, and “horses” the cavalry troops.

Our image of the jauntily clad egg-man, though, we owe to “Lewis Carroll”:http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgchap06.htm.

`What a beautiful belt you’ve got on!’ Alice suddenly remarked … `At least,’ she corrected herself on second thoughts, `a beautiful cravat, I should have said — no, a belt, I mean — I beg your pardon!’ she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn’t chosen that subject. `If only I knew,’ she thought to herself, `which was neck and which was waist!’

Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.

`It is a — most — provoking — thing,’ he said at last, `when a person doesn’t know a cravat from a belt!’

Such a gloss on the original is expected and even welcome, but the senseless addition of the kiddie repair brigade only does damage to the evolution of the Humpty legend. And anyway — what exactly are they supposed to accomplish with _brushes_?

The box’s take on “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” is another travesty. Everyone knows the basic stanza of the real version, but for fun, here’s the whole thing:

All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun.
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle.
That’s the way the money goes.
Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the City Road,
In and out of the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes.
Pop! goes the weasel.

Half a pound of tuppenney rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
Mix it up and make it nice,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Like Humpty Dumpty, this nursery rhyme has an “interesting history”:http://www.plateaupress.com.au/wfw/popgoest.htm. But here are the first couple stanzas of the version in the box set:

Here we go round the mulberry bush
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush
Here we go round the mulberry bush
On a cold and frosty morning

This is the way we jump about
Jump about, jump about
This is the way we jump about
On a cold and frosty morning

Now, judging from a quick Google search, this version is commonly found elsewhere as well. But that doesn’t make it OK! The annoying repetition is a poor substitute for the original content. I guess the idea is to make a nursery rhyme that kids can participate in, but there are plenty such verses out there already. I can see some well-meaning but deluded parent exclaiming, “But ‘pop goes the weasel’ doesn’t even _mean_ anything!” To which I say: Phooey! Not only is there a long tradition of glorious nonsense in children’s verse, but kids are no doubt taking plenty of the sensible stuff as nonsense too, and are perfectly happy to do so.

There are rays of hope out there, though. _Hippos Go Berserk_, by Sandra Boynton, is a modern classic, and _But Not the Hippopotamus_ is excellent as well. These books get it all right: fine illlustration, deft verse, a happy world tinged with sadness, and, c’mon, _hippos_! They’re also Ella’s favorites — probably not because of her discerning taste just yet, but because she picks up on the irrepressible glee I take in reading them. Maintaining that glee as she gets older is possible, but it won’t be easy — it will require constant vigilance against books that suck. There are worse jobs.

_(cross-posted to “Polytropos”:http://www.polytropos.org/)_

“163″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella163.jpg — She hasn’t shown any genre preferences yet, though she does seem to like books that she can whip back and forth over her head.
“164″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella164.jpg — She loves the drum; the only problem is that pounding on it and using it to keep herself up are mututally exclusive tasks.
“165″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella165.jpg — Very, very close to crawling, as you can see. Though she’s been at this stage for at least a week now — I still wouldn’t be surprised if she opts for walking first.

Note: The “picture archives”:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/index.html is now once again caught up with all the pictures that have been posted.

1. Ella has started taking interest in her own reflection. Her favorite site for self-absorption is my dresser mirror — she’ll stand on her changing pad and brace herself against it, leaning forward every couple of seconds to give herself a slobbery open-mouth kiss.

2. Food preferences have set in. She wants nothing whatsoever to do with peas, and will tolerate only the tiniest amount of green beans. “Country garden vegetables,” a greenish mix, also meets with stern disapproval. Having tasted all of these, I can’t say I blame her, but neither can I account for her passion for the corn and sweet potatoes blend.

3. Her attitude toward books has changed. She is no longer primarily interested in gnawing on them, but on holding them, turning them around, and opening and closing the pages (we’re still talking about board books here, of course). She doesn’t really pay much attention to the pictures when she’s by herself, but when I read her things she does. I’m not really sure what she’s seeing, exactly, or how she’s processing it, but she’ll spend a few second glancing back and forth and then fidget a little when she’s ready for me to turn the page. Today when I set her in her chair and took out a book to read, she smiled and kicked her legs with glee.

Ella’s as-yet rudimentary wave has evolved naturally from the “Imperious Gesture”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/07/the_imperious_g.html. On occasion, she will stick her arm out and fold her fingers up and down a couple of times. As far as I can tell, she knows perfectly well when a wave is appropriate (coming and going), but that doesn’t mean she conforms to societal conventions. The first time she verifiably waved at me was when she had just woken up from a nap in the Vibrating Chair Mark II (Rocking, not Bouncing). She smiled and stuck her arm out and did her little finger fold, all without me having waved at her. The past couple of days, when I’ve encouraged her to wave at people that she meets, she generally treats them with a piercing stare instead, and then, shortly after we’ve moved on, she waves to thin air.

First of all, where the _heck_ did the last month go? It seems like I was writing Ella’s seven-month update just a few days ago. But of course, looking back, all sorts of things have changed . . .

Milestone Watch: Ella now rolls over both ways with ease. She hasn’t yet performed a Rolling Maneuver to Intended Destination, though she often finds herself across the room from where she started. Crawling seems like it might be close — when she’s sitting up and sees something out of reach in front of her, she’ll crane forward to the point of tipping and eventually end up on her tummy. But her chief interest clearly lies with walking. She still loves to stand up, and pull herself to standing, which she can do with the help of someone’s hands but not quite yet with an inanimate object (though that’s very close). We used to play a game where I’d help her “walk” by lifting her arms up to help her feet clear the ground. Now we play the same game, but she’ll pick up her feet by herself. Soon we will need to start childproofing the apartment, which will be an incredibly daunting task. But we can take it in steps, since it’s not like she’ll be rolling around one day and then _running_ around the next, right? Right?

She nurses only once in the morning and a couple times in the evening now — intervening feedings are all formula, which saves Suanna the trouble of having to pump at work. She has baby food and/or oatmeal at lunchtime and suppertime. She’s eating Cheerios, too, and her ratio of AECs (Actually Eaten Cheerios) to those that make it to the floor, or are smeared all over her tray, or are hiding in the creases of her pudgy legs, is up to about one in three. Still no teeth, though there have been signs of teething for a couple months now.

Her sleep schedule has been in flux for the past couple of weeks, thanks to travel followed by a bit of sickness. Last night was the first one in a while that she slept all the way through. Her naps have been getting a little longer (hooray!); usually she takes a couple in the morning but only one in the afternoon.

She still babbles and gurgles a lot in private, and more than she used to in public. As far as new communicative sounds and gestures, there’s the “Imperious Gesture”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/07/the_imperious_g.html. She will also make this totally adorable “oh” sound when she sees something surprising or intriguing.

Favorite toys: plastic spoons and that one hangar she picked out from the closet. Also plastic cups, straws, and beer bottles. Plus the remote control. She has recently discovered that she can bounce up and down in her Exersaucer, which she likes. Her favorite Exersaucer game is called Storming the Castle. One of the attachment doodads on it is a castle with a spinny-wheel thingee — she’s discovered that if she yanks or pushes on it hard enough, it falls out. So now the first thing she does in the Exersaucer is to assault the castle and toss it from her sight. Then she’ll move on to gnawing on the knight’s head or shaking their Royal Majesties until they make music. Given her interest in hair, I introduced her today to Old School Pooh, the fuzziest of the assorted stuffed animals that are lying around in the corner waiting for her to discover them. She seemed quite fascinated by him, but it’s way too soon to say whether this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

She has outgrown both her infant car seat and her Vibrating Bouncy Chair, so later today we’ll be heading out to the store for larger replacements. You know, I’m starting to get the impression that maybe this whole having-a-kid thing could turn out to be kind of expensive . . .