Eight months

Look what Helena decided to do to assuage the unpleasantness that was the Backyard Photo Shoot, Take Three:

She started clapping! For the first time! While I was taking pictures! And then Harper and Hudson started showing her how to do it and encouraging her in the sweet, high-pitched voices they use with her and it was Extremely Cute.

Then the fun wore off and it was time for the solace that only this can bring:
Hudson was so pleased with the clapping that he forgot to be pitiful. He was also fresh off of a three hour nap, which is helpful. We did lots of going this week--the zoo, the park, the Museum of Fine Arts (free on Thursdays!) AND the Children's Museum. The weather started to feel ALMOST autumnal, which in Houston basically means that highs were in the mid-80's and humidity was slightly less than 90%. The glory days are coming soon. We will exult accordingly. A few more things about the baby girl, since this is decidedly her only "baby book":

EAT: She has eaten, and enjoyed, sweet potatoes and bananas several times. I remember about every third day that I should probably give her something. Maybe we'll do peas this week. She's still nursing every three to four hours during the day.

SLEEP: She still goes to bed between 6-6:30p and has started waking up somewhere between 4-5am for an early morning feed, after which she falls back to sleep. She wakes up to start the day between 7:30-8:30. She takes a good morning and afternoon nap if we're home. She doesn't sleep much when we're out, but neither does she get fussy, which is so nice.

BE MERRY: She has gotten really good at entertaining herself. As long as she can see one of us, she will play happily in her little play yard for extended periods of time.
When she's ready to get out, she does this:

Changing her diaper and getting her dressed gets increasingly difficult. She actually stood on her HEAD at one point tonight as I was trying to get her diaper on after her bath. I was holding her legs and she managed to upend herself and get completely upside down, while holding on to the changing table with an iron grip. When she crawls she uses one knee and the other foot to propel herself forward. She can stand up in her crib, even while encased in a fleece sleep sack. She isn't much of a talker yet, but she says 'dah-dah' pretty often, and sometimes when she is actually looking at the Daddy. I carry her around lots. Because I like to and because she only weighs 13 pounds. That will have to be all for now because it is late and I am tired. A side note: I've started keeping a list of the books we've been checking out from the library over there in the margin. I was keeping a list in a notebook until Hudson found it and colored over it with a black crayon. I might start a separate list of books that we own and would recommend.

Crafty

I am NOT crafty. I don't sew or knit or needlepoint. I do not scrapbook. I have, in the past few years, taken to making cards, on which I paint a little watercolor something. But I didn't start this because I really love painting. I started it because I detested card shopping. The cards were too busy or just ugly and, as for the "sentiment" printed therein? Well, let's just say 'unsatisfactory' so as not to use words like blather and tripe and banal, which would be disrespectful to those folks who make their living coming up with these pithy verses. Which reminds me that William Safire died. I will miss his columns On Language. Anyway, I made a couple of cards this week for my friends Alicia and Priscilla. I have trouble coming up with ideas--nothing new under the sun etc, etc..so Alicia's design came from the cover art for Maybelle the Cable Car, written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, which happened to be on the coffee table (neither of my two older kids could sit all the way through Maybelle, which is the story of a group of San Franciscans' quest to save the cable cars from extinction. It's a touch pretentious):

Then I painted some not very sunflowery-looking sunflowers for Priscilla, and added a quote from an old Alphaville song called "Forever Young":

I also made a thank you note with the sunflowers:

And that about did me in. And I could be happily done until January. Only I have children who love crafts. And who don't go to preschool. Or Mother's Day Out. OR any other place where someone else is responsible for crafts. I have realized that there is no better way to release The Control Freak Within than to do glitter with a four year old and a two year old.

Though I will say that our painting today went much better thanks to these that I bought on Saturday:

Look at the industrious harmony we had for almost an hour this morning!

And a gift for Grandmother Morrow's birthday:

Which, naturally, needs a picture of all three kids because apparently I am a glutton for punishment:
Sing it with me now: "Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!" I'm debating getting everyone smocked back up and back outside for round 2 this afternoon. I feel like there's an aphorism that goes something like, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

robed in righteousness

I don't blog much about current events, mostly because I don't have time to be as informed as I feel I ought to be if I'm going to give any kind of insightful commentary. But lately I've been increasingly annoyed as to why we spend so much time analyzing motive. I think we can agree that a congressman yelling something rude at the President of the United States is bad form. That Serena Williams probably shouldn't berate a line judge. And that a bunch of kids beating up another kid on a school bus is shocking. Why does the ACT (the inappropriate yelling, the beating up) so quickly get passed over into The Analysis of WHY? And it really is frustrating and lazy to always make The Why somehow about racism. There are people who are determined to see racism everywhere and people who are determined to see racism nowhere. I'm pretty sure the truth is somewhere in between. I read an interesting study about racism and children last week and I'm still thinking about it. The gist of it was that even when parents don't differentiate between races, kids are, of course, noticing and wondering why no one is bringing it up.

We are deciding about church. Since we've moved, we are about 5 minutes from our old church, and I really struggle with the idea that we ought to worship in our community and not drive past 87 other churches to get to the place that we think Meets Our Needs. Our old church and our new church have orthodoxy in common (though the old church might dispute this), and just about nothing else. Their orthopraxy is starkly different. At the old church the pastor is robed in a heavy black robe to remind him of the weight of his charge to faithfully render the Scripture. At the new church this morning, the pastor was robed with a t-shirt and jeans and his three year old son Christian, who, because his mom has been out of town hadn't been sleeping well and decided that he needed Daddy, right in the middle of a sermon about Exodus. The weight of his charge resting on his shoulder, he taught us about Jethro and Moses and the offering of burnt sacrifice in response to deliverance. There are those who are determined to see God everywhere and those determined to see Him nowhere. I am convinced it is the former.

Helena had about 4 bites of mashed up banana this morning and seemed pleased. We all went to Hobby Lobby this afternoon and got some paint and construction paper and glitter. I am 100% sure that I will regret the glitter.

Of shofars, harmonicas, and bells

This morning over breakfast we looked at the calendar, which hangs just above the table, and I noted that today was Rosh Hashanah. Hudson said, with a mouth full of waffle, "I want to SEE her." You want to see whom? I asked. "Roshanah," he explained. Oh, it isn't a SHE, it is a Jewish holiday, I explained. He insisted that he really wanted to SEE HER. I pointed to the square on the calendar where the words were written, "Here are the words that say 'Rosh Hashanah' Hudson, but you can't really SEE Rosh Hashanah because IT is a holiday..." and I just had to trail off because I couldn't remember (sorry Lauren Winner) WHAT Rosh Hashanah was. I remember once, years ago, sitting with my parents at a Le Peep restaurant in Dallas and I was reading the paper over breakfast and noted that it was Rosh Hashanah. My dad said, "Is that a band?" which made me giggle for weeks. It's the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the High Holidays which culminate in Yom Kippur. At least that's what it said on Wikipedia, so it must be true. Totally by coincidence (or WAS it??) we got some harmonicas yesterday which have been tooted with much zeal all day, not unlike the shofar which is blown on Rosh Hashanah:

Harper has been writing quite a few harmonica songs, utilizing the three notes she knows, which she refers to as: "High C, Low C, and Medium-sized C." One of the songs has catchy lyrics that go something like, "There is a fast car named Lightning (Lightning) and she likes the color pink. She has a friend named Mater (Mater) and he is ve-ry brown." The chord progression is a little tricky to describe, but there seems to be lots of High C, Low C, High C, Medium-sized C with a little bit of jazzy slide thrown in somewhere around "the color pink." I expect Disney/Pixar to be calling any day now.

The husband and I got to have a date Thursday night while Grandmother Pate was here. The president of the university where he teaches had all of the new professors to his home for dinner. The food was delicious and the conversation was rich. I also got to have lunch with three of my college roommates yesterday, including the radiant Tiffeny, who you would never know just weeks ago walked down a hall at M.D. Anderson and rang a bell symbolizing having finished almost a year of intense treatment for breast cancer. We ate appetizers and RED VELVET CAKE CHEESECAKE and talked, among other things, about the joy in mothering our THIRTEEN kids.

I love our neighborhood

We went for a walk yesterday afternoon between rainstorms. Harper on her tricycle (she has a bike, you'll remember, but it is really still too big and wobbly for me to supervise properly when I've got the other two along), Hudson on his little push trike, and Helena in the stroller. Our new neighborhood is the sort where people wave when you walk by. We had just turned a corner and I saw a car coming slowly towards us. They stopped in the middle of the street and the window rolled down. It was an elderly couple and the wife was driving. The husband said, out the window, "How. CUTE." And the wife went on to tell me that they had three grown kids who were also pretty close in age. I felt a little like Mrs. Mallard in Make Way for Ducklings. Proud, with a little extra waddle in my step. I do like when people make sweet comments because I can agree with them and not feel like I have to be a little apologetic, as I sometimes do when people make the, "BOY, you've got your hands FULL" comment. I saw something in the Dallas Morning News last weekend that made me so thankful for my healthy children who do indeed keep my hands full, but in a most beautiful, fulfilling, albeit exhausting way. I'll link to it, but don't watch it unless you need a serious catharsis. It's incredibly life-affirming, but devastatingly sad. It's about a baby named Thomas.

Ten on Thursday

1. Just look at Little Missy Pulling Up Girl. She has not yet figured out how to gracefully disengage from the standing and tends to topple over like a felled sapling, which makes her wail in frustration and, possibly, pain.

2. My favorite part of President Obama's Speech to America's Schoolchildren was when he told them they needed to wash their hands. I'm afraid the likelihood of that happening, even if The President SAID To, is about equal to the likelihood that government intervention is actually going to improve our healthcare situation.

3. Helena seems to have given up the middle of the night feeding! We've had about a week now of 11-13 hours straight at night.

4. Sometimes my entire Target shopping list is comprised of paper products: paper towels, toilet paper, wipes, diapers, tissues, Clorox wipes, swiffer refills, paper plates..That sound you hear? Al Gore weeping. In his Lear jet.

5. Hudson uses the 'yuh' sound for r's and l's and sometimes t's. My favorite words he says:
watermelon: "wah-yuh-meyun"
scary: "sca-yee"
yellow: "yeh-yoh"
caterpillar: "cah-yuh-pih-yuh"
So, if you know of any books about scary yellow caterpillars eating watermelon, you should definitely tell me about it.

6. Harper spent awhile yesterday perfecting this picture of a chick named, I think, Chica (or maybe Teacup--she has her own speech issues), and wanted me to take a picture of it:

7. We went to Dallas for the long weekend. It was very good to see family and a couple of friends. Helena did fine for all but the last hour going and coming back. In those two hours she cried more than she has in her life so far, cumulatively. Loud and sad she was.

8. Cousins:

9. Dear friends:

10. It's been raining quite a bit this week and yesterday, I entertained the two older kiddies by putting them in the stroller (not clicked in, for just a hint of Danger) and pushing them around the house kind of fast and crazy-like. You make your own fun.

seven months

We like nicknames here. Lately the husband has been referring to Harper as Big Little, Hudson as Middle Little, and Helena as Little Little. She is, at seven months, still very little little. This lends itself to a certain agility. She is crawling. AND pulling up. WHILE reading:
She still won't really sit by herself. I'll put her down on her bottom and she immediately gets on her tummy and into crawling position. I wondered with the other two why in the world there was a strap on the changing table. For Helena Jane, that's why. Changing her (size 2) diaper involves some major dexterity on my part. She kicks and flips and arches--I really think there might be serious gymnast potential. She's had a little cold this week and I've had to utilize the Dreaded Bulb Syringe. She sees that bottle of saline coming and whip-POW she is NOT having it. I have squirted saline in her eyes, mouth, ears, and, occasionally, in her nose. Last night she slept for 12 hours--or at least I think she did. I turned the monitor off in my sleep at some point, so it's possible she cried for hours on end and I simply couldn't hear because she is over in the west wing. Let's hope not. Harper and Hudson are paying more attention to her now that she's a little more interesting. I love how Hudson says her name--it's Huh-YAY-nuh. He likes handing her things, like his special puppy, and telling her that they are "veh-yee FRAGILE." He also enjoys relaying the news that "HuhYAYnuh spit UP," which happens pretty often, especially when she is participating in the aforementioned crawling and pulling up. Harper likes going in and talking to her when she's just awakened. We had to lower her mattress this week because she was doing lots of this:
She has also decided she likes sleeping in a fleece sleep sack. I like that it contains her to some degree. I still haven't tried giving her any food yet. Maybe this month..