Life of the party

Edith likes parties. We didn't realize quite how much until last Thursday evening, when we were preparing to go to a Halloween dinner up on the seminary campus. We told Edith that we were headed to a party. She repeated "pah-ty" eagerly and then some word starting with B that we didn't recognize. But when we got in the car, she pitched a fit. She wouldn't be strapped in for anything and kept pointing out the window and repeating the B word frantically. So Tom removed her from the car and followed her in the direction she was pointing.

They wound up at the grill in front of the adjacent building. All summer and fall, we have been grilling out with our neighbors on Thursday evenings. It turned out that Edith's B word was barbecue, and that Edith had come to associate party with the weekly barbecue. We had no idea she enjoyed it so much.

It was very hard to explain to her that the barbecue was postponed this week so people could go to a different party on campus instead. Once she got there, however, she had a great time, watching fascinated as the older children bobbed for apples. And the next night, when we got home from grocery shopping after dark in the rain, she made a beeline for the hearty souls upholding the barbecuing tradition in less-than-ideal, end-of-season circumstances.

But Edith enjoys formal affairs, too. Saturday we attended an elegant history department wedding at a nearby 18th-century inn, and she was pleased as punch to dress up and sit eating hors d'oeuvres with all the grownups. The only part of the evening she couldn't brook was the ceremony. It was out of doors in what turned out to be a stiff wind, light rain, and 50-degree temps. Most of the adults bore up nobly, admiring the bride and groom's forethought in providing each guest with a Lands' End scarf, tied with a poem about the vagaries of October weather. But Edith's patience was not so easily purchased, and before any of the wedding party had processed down the muddy, straw-lined aisle, she let the whole attendant company know she thought they were nuts. So she and I beat a hasty retreat to the inn, where she seated herself happily near the fireplace with some bread and cheese and prepared to greet the other guests once they came to their senses.

Edith and her lady-in-waiting

Autumn days

Some of what we've been up to this month. As in July, I suspect you'll see a theme.

You'll also see that I've tried a new template for the blog. Does it work or not?

Since their first meeting here, Edith has checked in with Mr. Jack-o-Lantern every night. She reminds us to light his candle and then gazes at him raptly. She has remained faithful even after his eyeballs were eaten out by a doo-rul, the jagged scars leaving him more sinister-looking than he began.

This is the hat that Edith refused to wear.

But she didn't object to this costume, a gift from Gigi Opal. Great grandmothers evidently understand cool better than mothers. Then again, Gigi has always had a fabulous sense of style, while Mommy has not.

More than half our photos this month have been taken on the playground. Clearly, we're trying to soak up the sun before the devastating impact Daylight Savings Time will have this weekend.


Edith's teachers had planned an especially fun day today of cookie baking and pumpkin carving (teachers carve, toddlers do "sensory play" with the pumpkin guts), and Ms. Chrissy was thoughtful enough to email us several pictures of the fun in progress so we could participate vicariously.

Had Dad been in this shot, too, it might have ended up on our Christmas card. "I am the donkey, shaggy and brown..."

The cosmic order

This morning when she got up, I showed Edith the sliver of a moon shining through her window. She loves the moon. We sat and looked at it for awhile.

"Moon...moon...moon...," she pointed. She got out Goodnight, Moon and compared the moon the cow jumps over to the moon that was outside her window.

Then she turned to her favorite subject.

"Edie. Bey butt."

"Yes, that's your belly button."

"Mommy. Bey butt."

"Yes, you found Mommy's belly button."

She pointed toward the back bedroom. "Daddy. Bey butt."

"Yes, Daddy has a belly button, but he's sleeping right now."

She pointed out the window. "Moon? Bey butt?"

These are the kinds of questions I'm looking forward to in the next few years.

Managing one's parents

In the last post I implied that I have yelled at Edith. It's not actually true. At least, not in the stand in the doorway and let loose way that Harriet's mother does in the book. I have erupted with an exasperated "Edith!!" on occasion, like when she planted her shod foot in the middle of my dinner plate (reason #465 not to nurse at the dinner table). And I have yelled a warning "No!," as when she was on the verge of yanking the double-pointed needles out of a kntting project in process. But yelled at length as a manner of venting, nope. But I hardly feel superior to Harriet's mother, because I do let my frustrations show in other ways, as Edith made clear the other day.

Nursing Edith has become something of a chore. She is very athletic about the process, and likes to wiggle, kick (she got me in the temple yesterday, again with shoes on), dig her nails into my belly button, and pinch me all over during a session. I've tried working on it some with her, but I haven't done a good job of laying down the rules. When I attempt to dissuade her from pinching or poking, she cries as if I'd stripped her of some essential component of the meal. So far we haven't pursued it much beyond the crying.

She also switches sides frequently. Perhaps it doesn't sound onerous, but constantly turning a 25-lb. creature back and forth to face the opposite direction gets tedious. The other day I was trying to remain patient, but on the fifth or sixth side-switch I'd had it. I wasn't rough, but I was cursory in turning her, and I heaved a deep sigh. Edith noticed. Having been turned, she stopped nursing, looked up, and reached out to pat my jaw, while in the voice she uses toward the dog said placatingly, "Nice, nice, mommy."

I think I've been patronized by a toddler.

Odds and ends

I. Since I brought up the subject of clothes recently--and because I can't resist lists--I have to crow over my thrift sale triumph. At our church's fall thrift sale this week, I found Edith

-A red velvet Christmas dress in mint condition
-Two sweathsirts
-A polo shirt
-A purple T-shirt
-A pair of classic train-conducter-striped Oshkosh overalls
-Five pairs of shorts for next summer
-A sundress for next summer
-A pair of navy school shoes in the next size up that look new
-An Elmo counting book
-An awesome colors pop-up book
-A scratch-n-sniff book of common objects
-A book of photographs of common birds with a CD of their calls so she can catch up with Uncle Peter a bit, since she continues to love birds
-A hardcover original Garth William illustrated Little House on the Prairie in mint condition
-A hardcover edition of The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (hiya, Uncle Peter)
-A funny story about just why the cow jumped over the moon
-Two years worth of Babybug, a young toddler "magazine" of stories and poems and art, in board book format, by the people who make Cricket magazine for older children

plus a pair of brown work-worthy shoes for myself that I needed and a newborn outfit for a friend who is due any day

...for $9. Total.

After leaving the thrift sale I went to the yarn store, where I bought the supplies to make Edith a single hat...for $17. The hat is made and she won't suffer it to be put on her head.

I sincerely hope the lesson here isn't that I should swap knitting for bargain shopping as a hobby.

II. Edith's newest phrase is an enthusiastic, "Aw right!" It's surprising how encouraging it is to have one's actions cheered by a toddler.

III. Her favorite books have all changed since August. Go, Dog. Go! is out. (It was so 15 months.) The new favorites are more numerous and actually start to include some that are interesting for adults...at least, the first couple of times each day.

The most cherished is one her cousins gave her, Micawber by John Lithgow. I first pulled this one off her shelf to read to her for a number of reasons. Micawber is a squirrel, and she loves squirrels. The painted illustrations are very realistic and engaging, each filling a large page, which I guessed would make it easier for her to get into. And for my own sake, I liked it because it's a great New York City book. Micawber is a squirrel who lives in the top of the Central Park carousel and goes over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day to gaze at art from the roof, through the skylights. One day he sees a student artist at the museum copying one of the paintings. Thrilled to encounter a live artist for the first time, he sneaks home with her and in the middle of the night, uses her painting materials to try some painting himself. He does this for a whole summer, until he is able to open his own personal gallery in the top of the carousel for the other city animals. The story is told in poem form and is delightfully whimsical. How many children's books use the words viridian, beguiler, and peregrination?

But we never read the poem. Edith calls Micawber simply Doo-rul (squirrel--it sounds remarkably like doo-re-ul, or cereal) and all she wants to do is find the squirrel on every page. She has a homing device attached to the book, I'm sure, because she can find its thin red spine anywhere in the house and demand a reading at the drop of a hat. As I'm not as fond of finding doo-ruls as I am of a poem about an artistic Manhattanite, I'm afraid I no longer have the rosy feelings I did about this book when Edith first latched onto it.

But she does have two books with narratives that she'll listen to now, which is a big change. The first is Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild!, by the same author-illustrator team that did Everywhere Babies, which I love. Edith never liked Everywhere Babies, so I was surprised and delighted when she latched onto Harriet after one reading. I can't imagine what she finds compelling about it: It's about an irrepressible, messy little toddler named Harriet, who wears red Keds. She has a dog and a mother with straight blond hair who wears jeans and T-shirts. Throughout the day, Harriet keeps making messes, though she doesn't mean to. It happens, "just like that." Harriet is always very sorry. Harriet's mother doesn't like to yell, so she tries speaking calmly with Harriet as they clean up each mess. But her calm responses get more strained, and finally, when Harriet and the dog rip open a feather pillow during naptime, Harriet's mother loses it and yells. And yells and yells. Harriet cries. (Note: This is Edith's favorite part. Schadenfreude?) Then her mother calms down, hugs Harriet, apologizes, says she shouldn't have yelled, but that sometimes it happens, "just like that." And they clean up the mess together.

Of course Edith wouldn't know anything about spilling Cheerios and jam, or getting paint on the rug, or pulling a place setting off the table. She doesn't have a piggy bank just like Harriet's, or projects from daycare hanging on her wall, or a bookshelf full of books next to her wooden dresser with the round knob handles. And her mother never gets tied up with boring things like paying the bills or drinking her coffee. And of course, her mother never yells. I have no idea why Edith likes the book, really.

The other book is the wonderfully quirky Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a catchy poem that keeps changing rhythm, so that at first you think it's one of the thousands of poorly scribed pieces out there that pass as poetry in the land of children's books, until you find that it's in your head for the rest of the day and that the twists and turns are what makes it so compelling. The poem is about the lowercase letters of the alphabet all deciding, in turn, to climb a coconut tree...until the tree bends so far from their weight that with the arrival of x, y, and z all the letters coming crashing to the ground. They get banged up in the fall ("...skinned-knee d, and stubbed-toe e, and patched-up f..." and of course, "black-eyed p"), but they all climb the tree again. Edith loves the crash, as well as the part where the uppercase letters, "mamas and papas and uncles and aunts," come to "hug their little dears and dust their pants." Me, too.

III. The alphabet is the hot ticket in town these days. In addition to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Edith's favorite song, which she'll start singing at any moment, is "Now I now I A-B-B..." Hey, you know her pronunciation--who needs 26 letters?

Her favorite letters currently are O, S, and X. Beantown residents may make of that what you will.

For Amy, who I just learned is reading this blog.

Attachment Toddling

Several posts ago--before getting sidetracked by what a legal scholar in my department yesterday termed "the start of the post-Constitutional era"--I promised a post on Edith's attachment to people and things.

Shortly after she was born, I read an excellent neurological science book, for the layperson who fancies herself smart enough for technical jargon, called What's Going on In There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. Never mind that I can recall almost none of the particulars, I enjoyed working my way through it. The chapters each dealt with the development of a single cognitive function and were presented in the order in which these functions started to appear: from sense of touch to sense of balance and orientation in space all the way through to language development and then that ambiguous thing we call intelligence.

Somewhere shortly before language was a chapter on emotional and social development. Here's where I regret not remembering the details--probably not only a function of my lack of scientific training but also of the fact that I read the book before my own child had anything like a social and emotional life, so I had no hard experience against which to compare the text. Now this new capacity in Edith seems to have emerged suddenly and rather strikingly, in a variety of forms, such that I wish I knew more about how it all worked.

Perhaps the most traditional marker of such affective development is that after months of tossing aside all stuffed animals indiscriminately whenever they got between her and a plastic noise-making toy, Edith has developed a fondness for one particular creature in her collection. It is an unassuming white bear, named White Bear, who of course was the one animal not actually given to her but in fact, to her father as part of a birthday balloon bouquet. Dad has graciously parted with the beast, and Edith has made a home for him in her menagerie. Actually, an exalted position: I found her a gift box of appropriate size, and White Bear now luxuriates in his own bed, right next to Edie's, under a washcloth blanket. Edith's favorite interaction with White Bear is to put him to sleep. She works very earnestly to take the washcloth by the corners and fully spread it over him, a maternal touch she hasn't quite mastered. But she clearly thinks it's important. When she has managed as best she can, she turns and gently shushes anyone in the room. White Bear typically sleeps 5-10 seconds at a stretch--not bad for a eight-month-old bear, I suppose--before being stripped of his blanket and greeted heartily by his attentive mama.

We have asked, but White Bear does not seem interested in eating, nursing, or being rocked or read to. And he is not allowed to ride in the doll stroller, which must at all times be stripped down for aerodynamism. It's a speed machine, not a conveyor of small creatures. But lest all this lead you to think, as we did, that Edith is casually taking White Bear to bed without any real affective ties...When we inadvertently left him behind in Hoboken a couple of weekends ago, she woke each morning until his return with the anxious question, "Beah?" on her lips. I guess she had peeked into his bed first thing on waking up and been troubled by his absence.

More recently the first words on her lips in the morning have been "Hawy Hawy Hawy!" She is extremely fond of her buddy, Harrison. The past two mornings she has collected a favorite book or toy, and rather than bring it to us as usual, has run to the front door with it, banging for us to let her out so she can go share the beloved object with Harry Harry Harry.

And it's not just Harry. Her fondness for people can be seen in the fact that she is learning names faster than almost any other words. She now knows most children her age in the neighborhood by name. She also knows their parents, who are mere nominal extensions of their offspring, important as conduits to interaction with the children. She will spot Annabeth's mommy or Sian's daddy at a distance and begin to shout their daughters' names, hoping that the appearance of the adult means the child is close at hand.

As in adult friendships, some children excite her affections more than others. She is quite fond of Mimmy, a new addition to her class (his parents call him Timmy). She also has a soft spot for the younger daughter of neighbors in our building. She has hardly ever played with the eleven-month-old Av-wy (Avery), who is outside much less often than her more active big sister, but that doesn't keep Edith from clamoring for her every time one of her family members appears on the horizon.

Conversely, she is wary about the seemingly pleasant Hannah. We don't know why. Perhaps she senses a rival? Just a few weeks older than Edith, Hannah is the other young toddler girl in the neighborhood who is bold, confident, and physically active. Not usually one to be cowed, Edith keeps a close eye on Hannah from the superior perch of my arms whenever we meet her and her parents on the street or playground.

Fifteen years ahead of schedule, Edith also identifies her friends by their wheels. As we pass the dozens of parked strollers in our neighborhood, she'll point to those of close friends and inform us they belong to Ha-wy or Av-wy or Mimmy. Bikes belong to the slightly older Nee-mum (Liam) or Am-buh (Annabeth), as do a certain minivan and Subaru, respectively. (Our own green station wagon is now the prized possession of "EDIE!!" as she reminds us every time we step outside.)

If parents don't merit individual names in Edith's world, grandparents certainly do. She has seen both sets in the past two weeks, and now has down a name for each: Mor-mor, Grandpa, Mom-mom, and Pop-pop. She'll point them out in pictures, too. There's a remarkable aura around grandparents. Within two minutes of their arrival each weekend, she clearly knew she had someone special on hand. She warmed up almost immediately and was a live wire for her adoring audience all weekend long.

Her cousins also have all made an impression, despite her seeing them rarely. Their pictures hang on our refrigerator, and a few weeks ago, she started identifying them all correctly without prompting. When all four are viewed at once, either on the refrigerator or in a photo in the album, she almost invariably identifies Dah-go (Santiago) first. Then Mammie (Maggie), Mat-mo (Matthew), and Abih (Abigail) in turn.

This weekend Uncle Peter comes to visit. We started trying to prepare her by showing her pictures from his last visit and naming him. He's always had a special magic with kids. We'll see what Edith thinks.

Fashion 101

Edith and I are both learning about clothes these days. First lesson, the basic question of how to dress ourselves. Edith has started at the bottom, trying to master the tricky business of slipping one's sock over one's heel. She is eager to make it work but doesn't have much patience for the effort involved in learning how.

I am starting at the middle, trying to determine which pair of pants on the mile-long sale rack at Ann Taylor might fasten comfortably at the waist when, in the six years since one last had to wear professional attire, one has dropped down through several sizes while living in a developing country, then ricocheted up through pregnancy, then had it all sucked back out again (and more) by a hungry critter...until the sizes in the closet run the gamut and all you know is that nothing seems to fit. The scale says I should look like I did in eighth grade; any woman who has been pregnant says "Ha, right." All things I considered, I'll take the stretch marks over the braces. But much like eighth grade, I have no idea what fits me well. And while I am eager to appear respectable in front of my students, I don't have much patience for figuring it all out.

As to respectability, another curious thing has happened since I last dressed for an office job: The skirts I considered perfectly professional at 24 now strike me as somewhat embarrassingly short. My legs are no thicker or flabbier now than then--quite the opposite--but it suddenly seems that a hemline three inches above the knee needs to be let out by at least half a foot. Have fashions changed? Is it motherhood? Is it the decade-age gap between me and the bulk of people wandering around this campus? What are these unseen forces that morph our sense of self, making us feel older mentally, quite independent of what may be happening to our bodies?

Edith is also expressing clothing preferences for the first time, within the limited range presented to her. I seem to be much better at figuring out cool for 17 months than cool for 30. On instinct this fall, I started buying her clothes depicting some of her favorite objects. It turned out to be an excellent strategy. The other day she asked to wear her new (used) apple dress. She pointed out the apples to all and sundry. When her father put her in new tights lined with dogs, she burst into the bedroom to show me not only her canine-covered legs, but how she administered Tylenol to each of the dogs. I guess they were teething. Last Friday, she locked in on a ladybug costume hanging in her closet, courtesy of Aunt Janet. We wound up delivering a ladybug to daycare that morning--to the great amusement of the boys in her class.


Edith tends to stand out sartorially at daycare even when she dresses as a little girl rather than an insect, because she is the only such in her class. The other seven children--Harrison, Torrey, Joshua, Zeke, Gavin, Reuben and Timmy--have yet to arrive in a skirt, pigtails, or pink. At age one, I don't think the children themselves are conscious of sex difference, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference in how they play. Edith shoots baskets, gawks at trucks, and wrestles her buds to the ground. The boys tote dolls around the classroom and clamor to use the miniature stroller. All this is well and good.

But the teachers, whom I generally think are fantastic, can't seem to check their own recognition that one of these things is not like the others. Each morning when we arrive, they greet Edith by commenting on her looks. She is told she is pretty in her pigtails, that her outfit is cute. Yesterday the "What I Did Today" section of her daily box score started, "Edith was so lovely in her dress..." If that's an action at all, credit goes to her father for dressing her.

I don't want to complain and sound humorless when everyone is trying to be nice. On the other hand, I worry that the message will sink in pretty fast that her looks are very important, much more so than the boys'. It's amazing to see the kind of social conditioning you swear you won't tolerate unfolding before your eyes. Any one instance seems harmless, hardly worth getting worked up over. But taken together, they start to seem damaging. At the same time, I don't plan to dress Edith in camoflauge sweats just to make her blend in. I just wish they'd ask how she was feeling, or what she ate for breakfast.

Lifelong friendship (all 17 months of it)

More then and now photographs. Edith has spent a lot of time with her good buddy Harrison this past week (in addition to the 40 hours/week they spend together at daycare). Friday night his parents graciously had us all over to dinner, and the next morning the first word out of Edith's mouth when I went to get her out of her crib at 5am was "Harry!" with a pointing lunge in the direction of his apartment.

They are starting to enjoy annual traditions together, too. At last fall's neighborhood block party, they were still in that somewhat stiff get-to-know you phase:


This year they were much more relaxed, chatting independently over a few drinks, happily free of the chaperones required when they couldn't yet sit up: