Cerin Amroth

I knew that Ella was coming up on an age where she’d learn about containers, and putting things IN then and taking them OUT. I just didn’t think she’d be so obsessive about it. So far this evening, she has:

1. Spent twenty minutes sitting on the floor with a measuring cup and the red wooden ball that goes with the stacking rings. She’d put the ball in the cup, pick up the cup and shake it while babbling happily to herself, and then — if the shaking hadn’t already dislodged the ball — take it out, and then repeat the process. Again and again and again. For twenty minutes.

2. Attempted to stuff the remote control into a glass already holding the red ball and her skeksis. It didn’t sit right with her that the remote control barely went halfway in, so Suanna had to hide it so that she’d be content stuffing and unstuffing just the ball and the skeksis.

Something must be wrong with me. I like running errands now.

Not all the time, mind you — at root, I would still very much like to do all my purchasing online, and have it take as little time as possible. I still don’t understand “shopping” as an aimless, recreational activity. In the past, I’d negotiate with Suanna to get out of having to go for groceries: “If you do it, I’ll do the dishes _and_ vacuum,” etc.

But, as with so much else, Ella changes everything. First of all, staying home with her means that every day I’m actively _looking_ for a reason to get out of the apartment for a little while, otherwise we’d both go stir crazy. And second, she likes errands. That is, she likes going out and seeing new things — for her there’s little distinction yet between a stop at Babies R Us and a trip to the zoo. And now that she’s pointing left and right at the things that catch her attention, taking her places is even more fun. The upshot is that I _leap_ at the chance to do all the little busybody errands that come up, because it adds variety to the day and because Ella gets to see more of the world that way.

It won’t last. Once the charm of the grocery store wanes for Ella, it will for me, too, and some of the day’s tasks will resume their familiar drear. So I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Ella had her nine month checkup today — a few weeks late, but her shots schedule is a bit off track thanks to a bit of the ol’ RSV she had way back when. Wow, that seems like a long time ago …

But anyway: it turns out that Ella is shrinking. Well, not _shrinking_ exactly, but her rate of growth has slowed. She is now in the 90th percentile instead of the 95th. In hard numbers, that’s 29 inches long, 22 pounds, and head circ of 18 3/8 inches. From her last check up, she has lengthened only a little but put on almost two more pounds, which is funny because if you had asked me before the checkup I would have said that it seemed like she was slimming down a little. Others have said it too. I guess it’s just a matter of baby fat getting translated into lean, mean crawling muscles.

By the end of the appointment, Dr. Klapp had ascertained that Ella was very healthy, and Ella had ascertained that it was OK to go for Dr. Klapp’s stethescope, but not for her glasses, which clearly meant that her glasses were the only thing worth having.

“176″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella176.jpg — This is the smile Ella sports when she _knows_ that you want her to clap or wave or something and she’s delighted at the prospect but hasn’t quite decided yet if she’s going to comply.
“177″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella177.jpg — She hasn’t figured out how to get them out yet, but her favorites are the circle and the oval.
“178″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella178.jpg — Ella takes a very dim view of camera interruptions when she’s trying to read.
“179″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella179.jpg — It’s definitely looking like there’s curls in her future. The tinge of red is beyond dispute, too.
“180″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella180.jpg — Just about everything on that side of the apartment is Ella-safe, now, but we still haven’t figured out what to do with the wastebasket. So naturally that’s the thing she makes a beeline for, every time.
“181″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella181.jpg — “It would have made only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a broadsword for a baby.” Or something like that …

UPDATE: Nana sent along a picture of “me at nine months”:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/nate9mos.jpg to compare to #180, above. Great minds think alike.

These days it’s hard to keep up with all of Ella’s changes. There was a time when we would relish her new activity for days at a time, now I feel like I’ll miss something if I blink. This morning I carried her into the living room to give Nate a few extra minutes of sleep. I had a 5 dollar bill in my hand, and I put it on the orange chair before setting her down in the middle of the room. I remember thinking that money would be a bad thing for her to suck on, but I was putting it halfway across the room in the middle of the chair cushion, so I didn’t worry about it. I’m sure you know what is coming next. I was in the kitchen not more than 5 minutes. When I walked back into the living room, I found Ella standing by the orange chair with the money in her mouth. Now begins the eternal vigilance about what I leave laying on the furniture, not just on the floor.

She has also become much more skilled with her hand gestures and using her fingers. Rather than thrusting her entire arm in the direction she wants to go, she now leads the way deliberately with her pointer finger. And she is much more agile at picking up Cheerios and other bite-sized food. She has also demonstrated a preference for her right hand. She’ll use her right hand first to pick something up. And she’ll even transfer something from her left hand to her right hand to put it in her mouth. She’ll hold the same Cheerio in her left hand until she’s picked up all the rest with her right hand. Then she transfers it to the right hand to finish it all off.

She is also very good at moving from standing to sitting. Nate was commenting last night that two weeks ago it seemed like she was never going to learn how to move from standing to sitting. She would pull herself to standing and move along the length of the futon. When she was done walking, she’d stand there and cry until one of us came over to pick her up or bend her legs to help her sit. Now she moves from standing to sitting and sitting to standing with incredible ease. Tonight she even looked behind her before plopping down. And she has two styles – the hard plop down when speed is an issue and the more graceful kneebend then plop when style is an issue. Any day now I expect her to lift up her hands and nod to the judges.

Last but not least, the syllables continue to roll off her tongue. Tonight she was fixated on the th sound, as in thirst. I pronounced a few words that began with th to encourage her. She enjoyed repeating the sound back to me.

And I’ll go out on a limb and say that I think she made a hand sign to me tonight. Whenever we make a bottle of formula for her, we have to shake it up for a while to ensure that it’s all liquified. I’ve noticed in the past week that she occasionally mimics my shaking motion with her hand. Tonight I asked her if she wanted a bottle and started heading to the kitchen. She immediately started moving her hand and wrist in the shaking motion. It would be so cool if she came up with the sign on her own. We’ll have to keep an eye on it and let you know.

“Would you like to read a book?”

I addressed the question to Ella, but I was really just thinking out loud, trying to figure out what to do with her next, since she was getting a little fussy. Therefore her response came as a surprise — her eyes brightened, and she clapped her hands together. At first I assumed that it was just a random clap — goodness knows she does it often enough — but when I went for the bookshelf and pulled _Dr. Seuss’ ABCs_ off the shelf, she clapped again, kicked her legs, and smiled. Then she sat quietly and intently on my lap through the whole thing, which is usually longer than she’s willing to sit. Clearly, reading a book was exactly what she wanted.

She has responded to purely verbal comments before, but they’ve always occurred in a clear context. “How big is Ella?” “And can you wave?” “And can you clap?” These three usually come in order, and even we don’t accompany the questions with gestures, they’re part of a ritual she’s familiar with, one that was first established with gestures. But “would you like to read a book?” came out of the blue, without gestures or context of any kind — heck, I wasn’t even looking right at her when I said it. And yet she understood, and responded.

I’m floored. This is so cool.

* Yesterday for the first time, Ella managed to navigate herself from her back to her front and then to sitting up. That was on the bed, where the cushiness helps, but today she pulled off the same stunt on the floor.

* When she wakes up from the naps in the bedroom, she’s now content to babble and play by herself for a good ten minutes or so before she starts crying for attention. A very welcome development!

* Her radius of exploration grows a little bit each day. For a while once she learned to pull herself up on things, her demesne consisted solely of the area bordered by the futon and outlying chairs that frame our living-room-type-area. But now she has made forays — standing and moving along things when possible, crawl-scooching when necessary — to the vicinity of the computer desk, the front hall, the back hall, and even the dining room table. I keep forgetting that she’s able to move at a decent clip now, too, and am frequently surprised when I’m occupied with something across the room from where I left her, turn around, and find her grinning triumphantly on the floor behind me.

Example One: A few days ago, at the checkout line in the grocery store, Ella dropped her black plastic spoon. It clattered to a stop at the feet of the checkout lady, and from her perch in the cart, Ella craned her neck to try to spot it. The checkout lady bent down and picked it up.

“Thanks!” I said. “I’ll take it back. It’s her favorite toy.”

But she hesitated. She looked at the spoon, then at me. “It’s awfully dirty down there,” she said.

“I’ll wash it off at home,” I replied. Immediately I felt that little twinge of resentment, now becoming familiar, that strikes whenever I come across someone (usually a stranger) who wants to do a little bit of parenting for me. I shouldn’t have had to say that I was going to wash off the spoon, but I realized it’d be the quickest way to get the spoon back and be on my way.

Still, she hesitated. “It’s really dirty,” she said again. It became clear that she _wanted_ to throw the spoon away.

“What’s your problem, lady? Do you think I’m going to secretly stick the dirty spoon in my daughter’s mouth as soon as I’m out the door? Or that maybe I’ll be a lackluster spoonwasher once I get home? And what freakin’ business is it of yours, anyway?”

That’s what I thought about saying, but didn’t. Instead I just waited her out — it’s not like she could actually refuse to return the spoon, which she realized after a couple seconds, and handed it back with some reluctance.

Example Two: Yesterday it rained heavily all morning and into the afternoon, so by the time it finally stopped, Ella and I were good and ready for a walk. I took along the rain tarp for the stroller and made sure there was a blanket in the diaper bag in case it got chilly. As we came out of the elevator, a woman who lives in our building (and a big fan of Ella) stopped to say hello. After trying to make Ella smile for a bit, she took a step back.

“Where are you going?” she asked, somewhat incredulously. It was still cloudy outside, and a little damp.

“For a walk,” I replied. There went that twinge again.

“Oh . . .” she said. She bent down to talk to Ella again. “Is daddy taking you for a leetle WALK? In those leettle cutesy bare FEET? I hope you don’t get co-old! I hope daddy has a sweater and a blanket for you!” — at this point she peeked around to the little storage basket beneath the seat of the stroller, apparently to see if there was a sweater and a blanket in there, which there weren’t because they were in the diaper bag — “So you watch out for the ra-ain, don’t get raindrops on those little FEET!”

On principal, I didn’t point out that we were well equipped in case it rained, or that it was eighty degrees outside despite the rain. As I headed off down the hallway toward the exit, the lady called out to me: “Sometimes it seems warm because you’re walking but remember that the baby isn’t!”

Armchair parents really annoy me, especially when they’re strangers, or when they pull the whole critiquing-the-parent-by-talking-to-the-child routine. I realize that many of them mean well, but that fact doesn’t outbalance the stupendous lack of sensitivity, or the fact that those of them who are themselves parents should know better.

What I wonder is to what extent my role as the father and not the mother plays into it all. On my side, I know it makes a difference — I’m more touchy about these little passive critiques because I’m aware that my role is, in society’s eyes, nonstandard. (I wish I had a dollar for every time a stranger admiring Ella said to me “Babysitting today?” or “Is today your day with the baby?” or “Where’s her mother?”) So what I’m really wondering is whether other people are more apt to proffer unwanted advice because I’m a man, not a woman. It’s a hard thing to measure; I’m sure all parents have to put up with this stuff, so how do you tell if men have to put up with it more? Further anecdotes and/or hard research data are welcome.

“Ella, can you do _so big_?” She smiles bashfully and then raises her arms in the air.

“And can you clap?” This one she likes. Her hands come together a few times and she kicks her legs. Then she extends her arm so that my hand can clap with hers.

“And now let’s wave.” And she waves. Finger-flop or arm-wave, she can do both now.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this is the same kid we had two or six or eight months ago. Of course, it’ll be a little while longer before any of _you_ will get to see her do those things so predictably; around others she’s still fairly shy. In Boston it seemed like her super-clingy phase had set in, though it hasn’t been as bad since then. It does seem like place makes a difference — she handles other people better at home or at the coffee shop than she does elsewhere.

“The Scooch”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/08/the_scooch.html continues to evolve; it more closely resembles a regular crawl now. But all her development has been toward pulling herself up onto things and standing with support. Our futon (now with foam pads on the sharp corners of the arms) is flanked by two red chairs — Ella will pull herself up at any point along that course and then shimmy her way back and forth to her heart’s content. If the chair by the computer desk is far back enough, she can use it as a bridge to get to the brown chair by the filing cabinet, which is where we _used_ to deposit all the odds and ends of the day. For all that, I wouldn’t say she’s into _exploration_ per se, yet. She just likes standing up, and, whether shimmying or scooching, she always seems to have a destination in mind — always something she’s not allowed to have, like pieces of paper or my laptop.

She has a tooth. Bottom center. A couple little points of it have just broken the surface in the past few days. The best thing about all this is that it means she’s been teething all this time, and it hasn’t been that bad. This is going to make her affectionate nose bites a little bit of trouble down the line …

Three naps per day is now the norm; 40 minutes in the morning, and hour or a little more around noon, and another 40 minute one in the afternoon. If they were longer it would be great, from a getting-stuff-done-in-the-day perspective, but at least they’re fairly predictable now. She does wake up in the middle of the night about half the time, now, not out of hunger but from gas or general disconsolation — most times it’s pretty easy to get her back down. Someday we’ll have to help her learn to get herself back to sleep, but that ordeal can wait until we move into a bigger apartment.

We are living in the twilight days of the Baby Bjorn. It’s supposed to hold up to 25 pounds, and Ella’s probably 21 and a half or so, but even that is a good bit to be carting around on long walks — especially in D.C. in August. As the weather cools it may see more use again. Fortunately she’s OK with the stroller now, provided it’s at its most upright position and she can see things. In both her stroller and her car seat, it’s normal for her to be straining forward as far as she can go and craning her neck to the left or the right to keep her eye on whatever it is she’s fascinated with at the moment.

She _loves_ Cheerios. As in, when I took the container with them out of the diaper bag at the coffee shop today, she screeched at the top of her lungs and pounded the table with both arms. Usually she’s not _that_ enthusiastic, but we’ve yet to find her upper limit of cheerio intake. In other food news, add spinach to peas and green beans as undesirables; must be a green thing. Sweet potatoes are still her favorite. When it comes to other finger food, little pieces of apple and avocado haven’t sparked her interest just yet.

Let’s see, what else is new . . . her new favorite toy: a black plastic spoon. The stacking wooden discs with holes in the middle are up there, too. Sometimes she sleeps on her side now. And her has a scrunchy face that she makes — I used to think that it was when her nose was irritated, but it appears to be an actual face expressing a mood. I’m still at a loss for what mood it is, though.