Cerin Amroth

“190″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella190.jpg — On Ella’s very first hayride at the Pumpkin Patch, she got to sit with our friend Tracy.
“191″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella191.jpg — Holding court in the Big Yellow Chair.
“192″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella192.jpg — And one more Pumpkin Patch pic. She looks awfully serious in all of these — she was pretty contemplative about the whole “frolicking in an autumnal wonderland” thing.
“193″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella193.jpg & “194″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella194.jpg — Obligatory pictures to someday embarrass her upon her graduation, wedding, etc. It’s these sorts of antics that make diaper changing such a fun-filled event these days.
“195″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella195.jpg — Here Ella is showing off her brand new (and first ever) shoes. Even when she’s not wearing them, she can make her way along the front of the futon with remarkable speed.

Is there such a thing as a 10 month-old falling into a book _rut_?

Adding up the minutes over three or four sessions, I’d estimate that Ella spends a couple _hours_ every day sitting by “her” bookshelf, yanking books off the bottom shelf and paging through them. I’m delighted, but this book obsession seems to be taking away time from other potential activities. She can crawl with alacrity now, but no longer seems pressed to explore every corner of the apartment — unless there’s an irresistable opportunity like the bathroom door being left open, more often than not she’ll make a beeline for her books.

Her self-guided tours of the literary world are having an impact on when we read to her, as well. A big part of her interest in books is that she likes the whole page-turning thing, now that she’s gotten the hang of it. On her own, she tends to breeze through books rather rapidly, only occasionally stopping to dwell on a particular page for any length of time. So now, when we read to her, she’s often chomping at the bit for a chance to turn the page, and we’ve got to read at a pretty good clip to get through all the words on a page. Just today she grew exasperated and crawled away from a reading of _Fox in Socks_ because I was taking too long with all the tongue-twisters. (I was happy to sit there and read the rest of it out loud to myself. I _love_ that book.)

I’m not seriously worried about Ella falling into a rut. But it is pretty amazing how much time she’ll spend with the books — certainly more than I ever expected at this age.

Ella’s playtime embodies the Second Law of Thermodynamics. She loves her stacking rings, but has very little interest in putting them back _on_ the wooden spool — it’s all about yanking them off and strewing them around her. The same goes for the DVDs on the shelf beneath the TV and the stuffed animals piled atop her toy basket. She always enjoys it when we look at the pictures on her plush stacking blocks, but whenever I actually try to _stack_ them into towers, her immediate reaction is to surge forward and knock them down. Indeed, the only constructive activity that holds her interest is putting the yellow shapes back into the red and blue plastic sphere thingee.

I have learned how to turn this to my favor, though. She’s always happy to spend ten minutes rifling through the her board books — she’ll start by yanking half off them off the bookshelf into haphazard piles around her, and then she’ll pick a few to page through. So now, when I need a few minutes to get something done, all I have to do is put the books away. The sheer amount of _order_ that arises from the rows, spines neatly aligned, is an affront to her, and so she’ll dive right in and occupy herself with the books once again.

Tonight Ella and I were reading some books before she went to bed. I chose – “Goodnight Gorilla”:http://www.peggyrathmann.com/goodnightgorilla.html. The book shows a clever gorilla who steals the zookeeper’s keys, as he is closing up the zoo for the night. The gorilla lets himself and other animals out of their cages, and they follow him home and into his house. The zookeeper lays in bed next to his wife without noticing that all the animals have laid down in their room to go to sleep. She says goodnight to her husband and turns off the light. The next page is a black background with all the animals replying good night. Another black page follows with the wife’s bugged out eyes glowing. On the next page, she turns on the light and sees all the animals – most importantly the gorilla laying next to her grinning. I’ll leave it there so as not to spoil the ending.

I read the book once to Ella. I made no loud exclamation when I reached the page with the wife turning on the light. I explained in the same tone of voice that the animals surprised her. After we finished, I let her page through it on her own. She was perfectly quiet as she studied the pages. When she reached the page with the wife turning on the light, she let out a huge exclamation and laugh. It was as if she understood the point of the book.

I quickly called Nate, who wasn’t at home, to ask whether he makes a big exclamation when he reads the book to her. He said he doesn’t and was surprised to hear her reaction. He told me that she has spent a lot of time looking at that book on her own and seems to enjoy it.

I’m sure she’s responding to cues from us and there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. For tonight, though, I’m going to allow myself to believe that she has paged through the book enough to understand it. This is semi-plausible, since the book uses few words and relies mostly on pictures. … At the very least, I’m happy that she’s having fun with one of my favorite books.

There was one other fun book moment. One of the books we read has pop-up windows. This is our only pop-up book, so I was curious to see how she’d react. She spent a great deal of time on the first page opening and closing the window. She seemed intrigued by the fact that the window moved up and down, rather than side to side like the book pages. She moved the window several times and then opened and closed the book cover, as if to compare the motion. She next seemed to experiment with shutting the book quickly to trap the window in the open position. Lest you think she is genius beyond her age, I had to set the book aside because she kept lifting it to her mouth to insert the flaps. Sometimes the baser instincts are the strongest.

As many of you already know, and as I “explained”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000556.html over on Polytropos, I’m going to be taking the “temporary” sticker off my at-home dad hat. Suanna and I arrived at that decision after much discussion, and we’re confident it’s the right move. Of course, I had my first occasion for doubt this afternoon, while struggling to change Ella’s second poopy diaper of the day — I thought, _this_ is what I’ve committed to?!

One reason I know it’s going to work is that the best times are still ahead of us. Every parent seems to have a favorite age for their kids, and kids in general. Some people like the tiny babies, some like the more mobile ten-month olds — very few dig the terrible twos, I assume — and some like kids best when they’re talking and reading and stuff. It’s probable that the age someone likes best is also the age when they’re able to excel the most as a parent. And, much as I’ve loved taking care of Ella up until now, there’s no doubt that I’ll be an even better parent when she’s walking and talking and able to be told stories. I wouldn’t say that I’m _impatient_ for that time — she’s growing up plenty fast as it is — but I’m definitely looking forward to it.

So what should I call myself? I don’t care for “stay at home dad,” because, as my friend Jim noted, at-home parents don’t “stay” anywhere. And the acronym “SAHD” that I’ve seen online is just plain ugly — I hope it doesn’t gain traction. “At-home dad,” which I used above, is a little better, and is what I’ve been using. “Full time dad” is OK, I guess, though really it could apply to all dads, including ones with regular jobs. But “full time caregiver” is right out. Any other suggestions?

“182″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella182.jpg — Standing Demonstrations like this are becoming more and more common. Her current record for standing unsupported is 22 seconds. Usually she can only score times like that when she’s not actively _trying_ to stand on her own, but that gap is closing.
“183″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella183.jpg — A bit of flower frolicking near Iwo Jima. Lest it all seems _too_ picturesque, never forget that the next moment is usually . . .
“184″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella184.jpg — . . . something like this.
“185″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella185.jpg — It used to be “don’t touch the keyboard.” Now it’s “if you’re going to touch the keyboard, please try not to slam on it with all your strength.” Ah, how we buckle.
“186″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella186.jpg & “187″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella187.jpg — Classic laundry peek-a-boo.
“188″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella188.jpg — In one was possibly our last weekend with the Baby Bjorn, Ella got to explore a corn maze.
“189″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella189.jpg — Unbeknownst to Suanna, Ella and I decided to make funny faces for this picture.

This may not be the best time to write a loving sketch of Ella’s current state of development — she was up four times last night, which meant that _I_ was up four times last night, so it’s going to be a bleary-eyed day. This is the second night in the row of this, so we don’t know yet if it’s a trend. I suspect that a big part of the reason is that she’s sleeping on the floor of her crib now, instead of in the bassinet, and has discovered that she can easily sit up and pull herself to standing and peer over the edge to see what we’re doing on the bed (i.e., trying to sleep). As a result, every time a little something stirs her out of her sleep, she immediately wants to stand up, and she’s not so good yet at laying back and down and conking off by herself.

My lack of skills in judo or aikido is making it difficult to be an effective parent — something that becomes apparent every time I try to change her diaper. She’ll sit patiently enough while you clean her up, but the second you take a step back to put the dirty diaper in the pail, she performs an elegant twist-and-push maneuver to get herself sitting up, followed by an immediate attempt to do one of the following:

1. Remove all remaining wipes from the wipe dispenser
2. Knock over the tin of diaper cream
3. Stand up and kiss herself in the mirror
4. Escape over the edge of the dresser onto the floor

When you try to put the new diaper on, she twists and squirms to get away — her ability to contort just the right limb in such a way as to make it physically impossible is uncanny.

… and now I’m picking up on writing this a little later, after a night of relatively uninterrupted sleep — and away from home, no less. A good sign, though it supports the crib-standing-distraction theory. But since I was already on the subject of exasperating things that Ella does, let me not forget The Dance of Paper Extraction, which goes something like this:

Scene One: I notice that Ella is chewing on something, and catch a glimpse of some sort of white wad in her mouth. She is very pleased about having it there.

Scene Two: I try to think back to when she would have had a chance to get some paper in there without me noticing. She can be remarkably subtle about it. Often the culprit is the corner of board book that she’s managed to gnaw off.

Scene Three: I set her on my lap and position my finger to try to extract the wad of paper. Ella, wise to this, cramps her jaw firmly shut.

Scene Four: I once again bemoan my lack of martial arts prowess as I wrestle her to a standstill and get my finger in her mouth. After gritting past the pain of her tiny tooth-nubs clamping down (she has two teeth on the bottom now), I perform the whole mouth sweep, usually snagging the offending paper somewhere near the roof of her mouth.

Scene Five: Ella forgets about the whole thing and happily crawls off to look for more trouble.

The Dance isn’t a daily ritual, fortunately, although I shudder to think — if this is what I’m _catching_ her putting in her mouth, what am I _missing_?

It goes without saying that despite being an increasing handful, Ella is more of a joy than ever to be around. She crawls with alacrity, pulls herself up with ease, points at things left and right and utters a variety of exclamations in response to stuff she finds interesting. She’s still pretty obsessed with the concept of In and Out, but will also spend a surprisingly long time sitting by herself in front of her bookshelf, yanking all the board books off and paging through them at random. Standing unsupported on her own, walking, and her first words all feel like they’re right around the corner.

A word about words: I don’t think there will ever be a single point where she definitively says “Dada” or “Mama.” Instead, it’s been a continuum of signification. She has used the syllables for a while now, and gradually they’ve come to be associated more and more closely with the two of us. She won’t respond to “Where’s Mama?” or “Where’s Dada?” yet, but she has undoubtedly used both phrases in general reference to us. She very clearly says “Mama” when she’s upset and wants Suanna to comfort her.

Not too much change in eating or drinking habits from last month, when it comes to volume. She is warming up to the yucky vegetables, and she’s open to a wide variety of finger food — not just Cheerios anymore. All in all, she eats and drinks with gusto, and gets as little sleep as she can get away with — where does she get it from?