Sunday morning at the deli

We went for our usual coffee/newspaper/something sweet trip to Zingerman's this morning, and we thought we'd make this the "Stuff White People Like" edition of Maia's blog. So, according to one of our favorite satirical websites (thanks to Tia Jo!), here's the stuff that white people like from our Zingerman's trip:

• Expensive sandwiches
• Coffee
• The Sunday New York Times
  
• Outdoor performance clothes
• Public radio
• Barack Obama
• Breakfast places
• Farmer's markets
• Apple products

I was reading the Times (including a couple of articles about Obama) while wearing a Patagonia fleece. Zingerman's is right next to the Farmer's Market, where we got our arugula (shouldn't arugula have its own entry?) and spinach yesterday morning. Zingerman's has both expensive sandwiches AND expensive breakfast options. And, of course, we listened to NPR in the car and Brian carried his iPod Touch with him during our outing.

The aforementioned blog makes me feel like a walking stereotype, but hey, aren't we all, on some level? I know that this site has been controversial, but I think that its satire is right on target; it gets at the heart of a certain strain of "white privilege" in America, and exposes some of the class norms that white people like myself have the luxury of ignoring. It's a very class-based list of "stuff," in that I think it pertains to the liberal, highly-educated, urban or college-town white people that David Brooks wrote about in Bobos in Paradise a few years back. And when I say "class," I don't mean income level. There are many people who make just as much money as our family does but who don't fit into these parameters at all. There's a whole different list of "Stuff White People Like" for them, including riding lawn mowers, cooking Sam's Club food on granite countertops, big screen televisions, and SUVs.

We were also thinking that it would be funny to do a spin-off, a "Stuff White Babies Like" blog for Maia's age group. Here are some of the things that could be on that site:

• Soft-soled shoes
• Strollers you can't buy at Babies-R-Us
• Wishing your baby could grow up bilingual
  
• BPA-free sippy cups
• Outdoor performance clothes for babies (Maia has a Patagonia vest, naturally!)
  
• Baby sign language
• Extended breastfeeding
• Baby carriers that AREN'T the Baby Bjorn
• Environmentally friendly diapers
• Multicultural baby dolls
• BabyLegs
• Organic baby bath products
  
• Not feeding baby rice cereal, EVER!
  

In other news, the Oprah show was filming at Zingerman's while we were there this morning. One of the cameramen focused his lens on Maia's face (covered in the remnants of an expensive, dulce de leche brownie) while he panned the seating area. Maybe Maia will be one of Oprah's Favorite Things!!! A Mom can dream, right??? ;)

She's really walking now!!!

Since our video last week, Maia has been going nuts with walking!!! She can walk long stretches at a time (12 feet or so) and has walked from place to place without our encouragement. She still defaults to crawling when she wants to get somewhere, but walking is becoming something exciting for her (instead of something she is apprehensive about).

In more Maia news, we're planning to try to wean her from her pacifier over the next couple of nights. She never really uses it during the day (thank goodness--that would probably make this process much harder), but we think it might be part of the reason for her often-disrupted sleep at night. She's not likely to be very pleased with this idea.

Finally, here is a video of her walking across the living room:

Words, words, words

Just wanted to update Maia's list of words, animal sounds, and signs for memory's sake:

Words:

• Fish
• Nana (for Nana Dawn)
• Ow!
• Car
• Mona
• What's that? (She says this one constantly, all day!)
  

Signs:

• Coat/Jacket
• Bread
• Bear
• Cow
• Fish
• Apple
• Bath

Animal sounds:

• Moo (Cow)
• Meow (Cat)
• "Clip-clop" (Sound of horse walking)
• The duck's quack has been generalized to mean all birds
• The growl refers to lots of growling animals, like lions and tigers and bears! (Oh my.)
• Hoot (Owl)

So, by my estimation, she has about 20 spoken words, 20 signs, and about 8 animal noises altogether. As you can imagine, our days at home together are very noisy! :)

The Return of Winter

We got about six inches of snow yesterday evening and overnight, but we will resist the temptation to hide inside and hibernate for any longer! It's spring! So, despite the snow, we went outside this evening and wandered around campus after dinner. Here's Maia, getting a kick out of her awesome walking skills!

From March 08

Announcing the Maia Book 2.0!

All,

It has taken a few months for me to get this put together, but Volume II of the Maia book has been published. Unlike the first volume, which highlighted the time before Maia was born with pre-Maia pictures, this book chronicles the first year of her life from the day she was born to her 1st birthday. It is 118 pages long and has about 250 pictures of Maia! I know, it is a bit obnoxious . . . but hey. . . we love our daughter :)

IF you are interested, you can purchase a copy for $38 (hardcover) or $30 (paperback) from the link below. The link includes a 15 page preview of the book.

The Life and T...

By Brian and Cara Ge...

Walking on her own!

Maia has been going through a bit of a sleep regression since last Saturday. We talked about this a long time ago, but it is basically a time in her life when she is on the cusp of understanding something big in her development. This might be language skills, crawling, or something you will never even know. Their brains are just churning and processing until they finally get it and then the night-time sleep returns.

The last several nights have been difficult... she woke up 6 times last night and needed to be put back down. I think I know what she is working on: walking! We posted a few weeks ago that she walked for us. Since then, we hadn't seen her walk on her own until last night, when she did it several times. We got some of it on video. Enjoy :)

Brian

Time

Yesterday morning, at about 11:00 AM, the three of us went to Zingerman's for our weekly weekend outing to a coffee shop. We shared bagels and cream cheese, chatted with the people at tables nearby, and did our best to navigate the deli's crowded seating area with a high chair and diaper bag. Brian had a brewed coffee, I had a latte, and Maia had her water cup (the non-sippy variety), which she now can drink from confidently and securely, like a grown up.

One person at a table nearby: "I wish that my parents had taken me to Zingerman's when I was a kid!"

I'm writing down this memory not because it was anything particularly remarkable or unusual, but rather to keep track of one of the things that matters most to the three of us: time. Ordinary, unremarkable time. We've made it a habit to carve out of the busy weeks these little moments for ourselves, when we go to a cafe or take a walk around the block with the dogs, or go play in the kids' area at the downtown library. We have these habits that I really treasure, and soon we'll return to another central one: the Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings.

Maia is growing up into a toddler a bit more every day. Today, she and I walked around the Kerrytown area of downtown; she held onto just one of my fingers and talked as she walked, pointing out things that she was noticing and identifying things by name when she could (car, ball, dog, and Mama). Our little baby was walking and talking her way through our time together this morning. One of those things that I heard over and over again as a new parent is how quickly the time passes, and how much I'll treasure ordinary moments. I wasn't skeptical of this because I did hear it so often, but it was a difficult concept to grasp (for me, who's not particularly meditative or Zen about life).

Now, I understand. I have this feeling of wanting to hold on to time, to grab it and stretch it out and make it last longer. And I realize that our family's habits are part of that effort. I recognize that when we take time to breathe and relax and talk with Maia about the world over a coffee or as we walk around the block, we're pausing the clock for a moment.

Someday I'll be back at work full-time. Someday Maia will be in Kindergarten. Someday this time we have together will be lost, and I suspect that it will be an absence that I feel profoundly, deeply, down to my core.

What a beautiful day!

From Almost Walkin...

We can feel it! Spring is almost here!

Another winter week, another little cold.

From Early March

Maia has another cold, which has become an irritant that's upsetting her nighttime sleep. I think that this is her third or fourth cold this winter (since October, maybe?), and I can say for certain that we're all completely tired of this season of illnesses. We know that we've been really fortunate in the grand scheme of things (colds are really no big deal, after all), but still . . . enough. It's time for warmer temperatures and no more snow for a while!

Maia and I went to Target today and just spent some time walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the store. (They have these big, red, concrete globes--about 3 feet high--along the front sidewalk. Maia couldn't wait to walk from one "ball" to the other, while saying "ball" the whole time.) It was purely pleasurable to be outside in a bit of sunshine, with temperatures at about 40 degrees. It felt like summertime, comparatively speaking. Maia's so close to being confident enough to walk herself; she'll just walk next to you now, holding on with one hand to one of your fingers. I'm 100% sure that she could walk on her own if she felt like it; at this point, I think it's an issue of confidence mixed with a bit of fear. Because she's so tall, she might be a bit hesitant to walk because she has further to fall than most other babies her age. So, obviously, there's no hurry on this one!

My jobs have kept me very busy these last couple of weeks; I've been doing something childbirth-related every night of the week since LAST Monday, I think (including all day Saturday and Sunday). This busy schedule is excellent and much appreciated, in many ways, because when I'm working, I'm providing that extra bit of money that we need to keep things stable on a monthly basis (and thus extend the time that I can be home with Maia during the daytime). But, particularly with the rough sleep we've had this week, I think that everyone here in the Family G household is pretty wiped-out.

Finally, on the new words/signs topic, here are some additions in the last few days: bear (sign), cow (sign and "mooo" noise), fish (sign and word, which sounds like "shhh"), and light (sign).

Yay!

It looks like Maia will probably be able to attend a caucus with Mom and Dad! Maybe our votes will matter after all . . .

What else does this mean? Rallies, speeches, volunteer opportunities, general political geek heaven. Barack Obama might as well buy a house here in multiple-degreed, lefty, energized, counting-down-the-days-until-Jan.-20th Ann Arbor. :) I think he'll drop by here a few times.

Mothering a toddler

From Early March

Maia woke up at about 6:00 this morning, and is now right on time for her first nap (which doesn't really happen at a particular time, but rather is pretty predictable at two hours after she wakes up). I'm brewing a small pot of coffee for myself, and thinking about what it's like to be home all day with a toddler.

• So often, Maia can verbally communicate what she wants now, or what she's thinking about. She'll say "Ma-Mo" when she's thinking about Mona, or "Ball" when she's done eating and wants to play. It's cool to watch her be able to think about things that aren't right in front of her--quite a developmental leap forward from infanthood.
  
• She's developing a taste for the repetitive, particularly when it comes to books. Her current favorite: a board book I got her at Border's last week called Animal Talk. I think we read this book fifteen times yesterday. Honestly. She knows all the animal sounds and thus can "read" along with me. The cutest page: the sleeping polar bear at the end who says "night-night." Maia says "night-night" each time we read the page.
• She's very proud of her use of the word "No." Just this morning, she offered Brian one of her breakfast Cheerios. He said "No, thank you," but then changed his mind a couple of seconds later. When he asked her to share another Cheerio, she very emphatically said "No!" You snooze, you lose, Daddy.
• She's starting to develop some of the precursors to tantrum-type behavior. For example: if she's getting worn out and is ready for sleep, but you take her away from the activity she's doing, she'll start to arch her back and whine in a growling way. Her little voice can be all gravelly sometimes, and she makes the most of it when she's not happy. Also, just this week, she had her first "fit" of throwing bits of food on the floor when she was ticked off about something. This kid is developing some opinions.
  

Our First Swimming Lesson!

Today was Maia and my (Dad) first swimming lesson at the YMCA! Maia did really well, playing in the pool for well over a half an hour. She went under water a bunch, swallowed a bunch of water, and spit out a bit of water too. She really seemed to enjoy the entire endeavor.

This class will last 8 weeks long and will coincide with Cara's childbirth classes on Monday nights. I saw it is a great opportunity for Maia and I to have a fun activity... just the two of us. She is getting to that age where she is really interactive and fun, so I think this will be a blast.

Most of her time today was spent obsessing about the volley balls she saw on the side of the pool. She was saying "Bawl... Bawl" all evening! She did take a break from obsessing about the ball to obsess about the duck we were playing with. In addition to "Bawl... Bawl", she was making the duck sign and saying "dwack... dwack" -- a combination of duck and quack.

Thats all for now. Time to relax. Taking a kid to the pool is tiring work!

What did we do today?

So far, we . . .

1) Had breakfast. Maia: Cheerios, applesauce, cheddar cheese. Mom: Cheerios, yogurt.
2) Played in the house all morning. Reading books, talking about footballs, soccer balls, cars on the road, our dogs, food, and several other things that Mom can't quite understand yet!
3) Maia took a morning nap, 9:00 to about 10:30.
4) Met B for lunch at Ahmo's, our lunch spot. Maia had pastrami, gyro bread, turkey, cheese, and a french fry.
5) Went to the Lamaze office to pick up supplies for my class, which starts tonight. (I've been teaching the very short 2-week class for a few months in a row now; it will be good to start a 6-week class again tonight. Ahhhh.)
6) Maia went down for nap #2 at about 1:00, and is still sleeping. I did a few more work-related things and started reading a new book, called The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

At about 4:45, B will come home and I'll be off to teach for a couple of hours. On the way home from teaching, I'll probably stop at a grocery store to pick up some ice cream and a bottle of red wine. There are primaries tomorrow, and I have to make sure that my kitchen is appropriately stocked for watching returns once the polls close! :) (Jo, Lu and Katie--what I wouldn't give to hang out with you guys to watch the returns!)