Busy days

Maia's on her way to her second nap at the moment (the first one is usually right around 9:00, the second sometime between 1:00 and 2:00), and I thought I'd take a few deep breaths, relax, and do a blog post. Our family is in the midst of a couple of very busy weeks, due in part to some deadlines at Brian's work, a lot of childbirth classes and client meetings for my work, and general toddlerhood with Maia. :)

This evening, if the snow lets up and it's safe to do so, I'm going to drive to East Lansing to hang out with Mom and spend my first relaxing night away from Maia since she was born. (I was gone through much of two nights last week, working with my client in labor, but that sure wasn't the same thing as going out to dinner and seeing a movie!) I have an appointment at the salon in Okemos tomorrow morning for a haircut and color, so I have to find my way out there one way or the other. I'll probably start a new book, too; since the new year, I've made it a priority to get a lot of reading done on a weekly basis, and so far I've been sticking to that promise to myself. I just finished Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father this morning, so it's time to move on to something new.

About five or six nights out of seven these days, Maia will go to sleep at about 7:30 PM and not wake up until about 6:30 AM, so it's much easier now for me to leave for an evening; most likely, Brian won't need to get up in the middle of the night to warm up a bottle and feed her. She's still asking to nurse several times a day, but we've made that transition from one purpose to another: nursing is largely about a social and emotional need now, rather than a nutritional one. Of course, she still gets my immune system antibodies and good proteins and fats and all that good stuff (which is perhaps part of the reason why she didn't catch our various winter stomach viruses). But, in many ways, it feels like we've entered the toddler nursing stage, one in which it's a form of emotional comfort and re-connection with Mom after all her exploring and adventures.

What else? Well, after my last post (Monday?) in which I listed all of the words and signs that Maia knows, we've added a couple: "car" (word and sign) and "duck" (sign--she was making the quacking sound already). She's also completely obsessed with saying and signing "ball"; we went to Target yesterday afternoon and got her a second soccer ball, and replaced a football that Stella chewed up.

It's really remarkable how quickly she's picking these things up right now. I was looking back over old blog posts to see when she started verbal communication in the form of intelligible words, and it was during her ninth and tenth months . . . she was barking like a dog at nine months whenever she'd see a dog, and then she said "hi" just days after she turned ten months old. This Sunday, she'll be fourteen months old; what remarkable development in such a short period of time! By saying "remarkable," I don't mean that I think Maia's pace of development is anything unusual; I just mean that it's amazing to me to think about how quickly babies take on all of these uniquely human characteristics and abilities. It's very cool.

OK, I think that that's enough for now. It's time to do some laundry and clean up the debris left behind in the wake of Hurricane Maia. Later!

Lots to say

I thought we were due for a short post in which I tried to keep track of Maia's various words, sounds, and signs . . . I'm starting to have trouble keeping them all in my mind when I pause to think about it.

Words (spoken):

• Hi
• Bye-bye
• Night-night
• Uh-oh
• Mama
• Dada
• Dog
• Ball
• Banana
• No
• Bottle
• Water
• Mona

Signs:

• Milk
• Cheese
• Baby
• Ball
• Dog
• Water
• Elephant
• More/Want
• All done
• Play
• Eat/Food
• Banana
  

Animal sounds:

• Barking like a dog
• Elephant sound
• Monkey sound
• Quacking like a duck

Brian, am I forgetting any??

Looking forward to spring

So, in the last few days, we have all been sick.

Cara was sick enough on Friday to require me to come home from work and take care of Maia. Maia has had a cold since Thursday. I have some sort of intestinal ick that is making me feel pretty awful.

It has felt like someone has been sick or recovering from being sick all winter. I am really looking forward to springtime.

We will spend a lot more time outdoors. Before fall ended, we got a bike seat for Maia but only got a few rides in. I look forward to nightly bike rides and walks around our neighborhood. The farmers market will be back and we will enjoy the bounty of the Michigan harvest. I can get the smoker out and make barbecued chicken. I can get the grill out and make grilled veggies and burgers.

I think we are all feeling a bit of cabin fever. I know Spring is coming soon, but it seems as though it can't get here soon enough.

In a quick Maia update, she hasn't really walked since Saturday... she seems to have lost the motivation. Again, we aren't pressuring her, so she is in no hurry.

Thats all for now,
Brian

BIG DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're on our way out the door but . . .

Maia took her first steps today!!!! It was far from confident walking, but she took 4-6 steps in a row a few times. :) More to come . . . perhaps photos or video?

Happy Valentine's Day, Pt. 2

From Mid February

Papa Stan spent most of the day with us today, as he does every Thursday. He leaves Saturday for five weeks in Alaska for his annual trek to the Iditarod. We'll miss him very much. Safe travels, Papa Stan!

Maia's nose is still running like a faucet, but, fortunately, it's clear (TMI??) and not impacting her mood or her ability to nurse or anything. She's asleep right now, probably for a couple of hours or so. Just to be safe, though, I don't think we're going to Mother's Group today. We'll spare the other babies from the little critters in Maia's boogers. :)

Last night, I had the opportunity to "shadow" a labor nurse at U of M's Birth Center (it's an arrangement we've made through work). I had the amazing, beautiful experience of watching the birth of a baby. (For the sake of that family's privacy, I'll keep the details to myself.) I can't believe how fortunate I was . . . my job is really cool, you know?? :) I'm still smiling, more than fifteen hours later.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Happy Valentines Day to my Ladies!

So this is the second Valentines day that I get to wish a happy day to Maia. One year ago, Maia wasn't yet 6 weeks old. I had only gotten to know her by then. Now, of course, she is saying all sorts of words (Mommy, Dada, dog, woof, night night, hi, bye bye and most importantly: No!) and signs (milk, cheese, eat, want/more, water, play, dog, baby, ball). She laughs when we play and she is able to stand unassisted for up to 10 seconds. Her favorite food is cheese and she loves to work at her table while reading books or putting together (read: taking apart) puzzles.

I also want to say Happy Valentines Day to Cara. With money being tight lately, we have not given gifts to each other on the holidays that we would normally do so. That doesn't mean that I can't love her on Valentines Day. She is the glue that is holding the family together. Her ability to stay home is directly related to her drive to do so. We wouldn't be able to do it without her Lamaze work and her newly started doula work. (Did we mention that Cara picked up a second client! We are so proud of her!) Staying home with a young toddler isn't easy... especially when she has been working so many evenings and weekends. But we are benefiting from her many sacrifices related to staying home. In other words, I really appreciate Cara. I love you!

Today will not be much different than most days. Maia woke up with a stuffed nose, so she may be coming down with a cold. We'll keep an eye on that. Work is getting really busy the last few weeks as we push towards our next major release. Because of this, we will celebrate Valentines day on Saturday when Cara and I will go to a special 5 course meal put on by our butcher (Sparrow Market).

In an unrelated note, I want to send good healing vibes to Maia's younger cousin Matthew who is pretty sick right now. We all hope you get better, little one.

Talk to you soon,
Brian

Weekend Update

Yes, it was a nice weekend.

I (Brian) went out Friday night to see "Cloverfield". I've got to say: as far as monster movies go, this one was really refreshing and entertaining. I really liked it. I also really liked "The Blair Witch Project" when it came out, so take it with a grain.

Maia slept through the night again, leaving Mom and Dad pretty well rested Saturday morning. I went and got our taxes done, and were pleasantly surprised by our tax refund that was nearly double what we expected. It PAYS to have kids, so it seems :)

Cara went off to teach a private child birthing class and picked up a new doula client. Good for her! I think this doula thing is going to work out! Good job Cara! Dad played with Maia and went to the grocery store with her. When mom got home, we all went to Zingermann's for some tasty, tasty, half-off cinnamon roll and some hot chocolate. Maia was pretty angry when the cinnamon roll was gone. She is getting demanding like that. After bedtime, Cara watched the election returns (go Obama!!!!!) while dad pumped iron (and got really buff) and played Warcraft.

Sunday was less busy. Kitty, Cameron and Gracie came over for lunch. We made a clone of "Dave's Open Road" and they baked a decadent chocolate cake. Maia and Gracie played a bunch and hugged each other. Maia learned that she can use her push-cart more like a scooter by standing in the cart with one leg and pushing off with the other. Later, we took a trip to the mall and walked a bit. Dad made a chicken-noodle stew and we relaxed for the rest of the night.

I am at work again, waiting for my code do update from source control... which has finished so I gotta go.

What did we do today?

• Maia slept for 12 hours straight last night (!!!), so we woke up rested and happy at 7:15 AM.
• Maia had cheddar cheese, Cheerios, and 1/2 a banana for breakfast. I had Cheerios, too, with the other half of the banana. We practiced the signs for: cheese, banana, water, more, and eat.
• Maia went back to sleep at about 10 AM, at which point I showered, watched yesterday's episode of A Daily Show (how much I miss the writers for THE Daily Show--the "A" version is still good, but not the same . . .), cleaned the downstairs floors, read a bit for fun (Hillary Clinton biography) and a bit for work (Impact of Birthing Practices on Breastfeeding).
  
• Maia played with her puzzle, her ball, and her stacking cups after her nap. She's now able to re-stack cups and rings and that sort of thing after taking them apart. She'll get frustrated, though, when she re-stacks things out of size order, thus complicating the completion of the task.
• Maia had yogurt, graham cracker, and chili for lunch.
• We went for a drive together around Ann Arbor, just checking out the scenery and watching the students traipse around with their iPods and Uggs and backpacks. Are Uggs waterproof?? It's wet out there.
• Maia's on her way off to sleep for her second nap now, and I just figured out how to tune our downstairs stereo system to NPR. :)

The signs that Maia knows now are: more/want, water, milk, dog, cheese, eat, all done, book, baby . . . and a couple of others that I'm forgetting!

Thoughts About Stuff

Well, look at this. It's the first national poll that shows Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest for the nomination. (Albeit in a statistical dead-heat.) Wow.

I'm thinking about all of this in a new way . . . this next President will, most likely, be in office until Maia is ten years old, thanks to our little habit of re-electing our first term Presidents. So who is it that I want to be in office for the first decade of Maia's life?? Who inspires me, who do I hope is the person whom Maia remembers as her first President?

(For me, it was Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Ick.)

Super Week

Things we're excited about this weekend and week:

1) Maia turned 13 months old yesterday!

2) The Super Bowl is this evening, and we might watch a bit of it after Maia goes to bed (still obeying that "No TV until she's two" rule . . .). The only reasons it's interesting to us are because of the record-breaking aspect of it all, and the fact that I had a "The Bible As Literature" (English 401) class discussion section with Tom Brady in college. No, surprisingly, he didn't have a supernatural glow to him, and he wasn't accompanied by a chorus of angels when he walked in the room.

2) Super Tuesday Primary Day! We're excited to see what happens with the election returns on Tuesday evening. We'll probably be up really late around here on Tuesday night.

New Photos

Hey, we've posted some new photos of Maia from the last few days. Included are: more pictures of Maia reading her books, Maia and Dad, and the awesome "Beach Day" party that we had in Mother's Group this week! :) Oh, also, there's one in there of her making the sign for "water" (her hand tapping against her cheek).

We're all happy and healthy and over our various stomach viruses and other sundry ailments here at our house, so all is well.

(Also, on an unrelated and "Thoughts About Stuff" side note, I'm reading a biography of Hillary Clinton right now, and, after watching the debate last night . . . I really would be genuinely thrilled with either candidate. How awesome is that, FOR ONCE!?)

From Late January

What's been keeping us busy?

Here is a quick video of what has been keeping Maia busy. She loves to push her cart around and play on her rocking horse.

Random stuff for the day

1) Maia isn't sick yet! This might mean she's in the clear, because I'm almost back to 100%, and Brian feels significantly better, too. Here's what probably happened: I got sick first but continued to nurse and give Maia pumped milk throughout the illness. What this probably means is that she got the defensive antibodies that my body made to fight my own illness, but she didn't get the illness itself. Yet another testament to the awesomeness of nursing. :)

2) Babies 'R' Us doesn't really seem to be in the one-piece bathing suits for girl babies market. There was like ONE one-piece there for about EIGHT different bikinis. If you want to get a bikini for your baby girl, have at it, but how about a few choices for those of us who don't?

Speaking of Health

What a weekend. On Saturday afternoon, Cara quickly came down with some soft of flu-like "thing" which disabled her for the night and Sunday. So, for all of Sunday, I let her sleep and took care of Maia in order to let Cara get better and avoid shedding the virus on Maia. Unfortunately by 8:00 Sunday night, it was clear that I had also picked up the virus. I'll spare you the details, but it is worth noting that I literally lost 10 pounds in 8 hours! I spent the entire night tossing, turning and churning.

Nana Dawn has been great and has come out for the day to do what I did yesterday: let Cara and I get better and avoid giving the nasties to Maia. As of 5:00 this evening, she has shown no signs of getting our ick. If we are still funky tomorrow, Papa Stan has offered to come out and do it again for us.

After having gone through the nights we have, I DESPERATELY do not want Maia to get this. It will be horrible if she does. Lets cross our fingers that she doesn't!!!

Health

Brian and I have been thinking a lot lately about the question of our health, the work we have to do to improve, and the things that we are teaching Maia about food, exercise, and health in general. We recognize that, at the moment, we are great role models with regards to some things, and not great in other ways. (Of course, I'm talking about this all within what's largely Brian's food philosophy: eat whole foods and eat local foods, as much as possible.)

First, the good side: we eat very well with regards to focusing on whole, real foods, instead of processed stuff. The most processed things that Maia eats with any regularity are her morning Cheerios. That's pretty good! :) Today, her meals consisted of: organic applesauce, Cheerios, water, breastmilk, Provolone cheese, banana, wheat spaghetti, tomato sauce, wild boar sausage, whole peas, chicken breast, carrot slices, and Yukon gold potatoes with tarragon and rosemary. So, on this side of the equation, we're handling things quite well, it seems. She is becoming a bit more fussy with her foods, in that she plays around with her meal more frequently and is becoming a less focused eater, but it hasn't changed things tremendously . . . yet. :)

But, on the exercise side of the health equation, we leave much to be desired. Wow, do we have some work to do here! I've started a strength training routine using free weights and a ball, and Brian's actually out of the house right now buying a weightlifting bench and dumbbells from some dude on Craigslist. I'm writing this down now because it will help me (and probably Brian) create some accountability for our progress.

I think we're both thinking about this these days because this is, unquestionably, part of our role as parents: we have to lead by example, and we have to BE what we'd like Maia to become. No guarantees, of course, but we can at least try to make things more likely rather than less. To some degree, we've given ourselves a pass during the first year of her life; an infant certainly isn't as aware of his or her parents' actions as a toddler is. But that's starting to change now, and if I believe that the best way to make Maia into a reader is by reading a lot myself (and research backs me up on that one!), then surely the best way to make Maia physically healthy is to live that life myself, too. It would be hypocritical of me to think otherwise.

Remembering

I was thinking about all of the changes we've seen in Maia's communication and mental development lately, and I realize that her progress towards walking might be somewhat "on hold" while her verbal progress leaps forward. Then, I thought back to the times when her verbal progress seemed to be moving rather slowly, but the physical stuff was going crazy! Thank goodness for the blog we've been keeping, because I can attach dates to my thoughts:

• August 23--confident and solid on her hands and knees by now, Maia begins crawling backwards (at about 7.75 months of age)
• September 3--focus on crawling is disturbing her sleep now; "downward dog" position with her behind in the air (just turned 8 months)
• September 14--hesitant crawling forwards
• September 20--confident crawling forwards
  
• September 21--pulls herself up to a kneel
• September 22--pulls herself up to a stand

I felt differently about crawling then than I do about walking now. For some reason, I was really excited to see her crawl, because it seemed as if she was getting frustrated at times with her inability to be mobile. During her sixth and seventh months of life, she often seemed bored with being in one place, and her body just needed to catch up to her brain in terms of its motivation to get going!

Now, with walking, I don't observe that she feels that way. Maia seems extremely content with how quickly she can either 1) crawl from one place to another, or 2) cruise from one place to another along the furniture.

Meanwhile, at least when she's home with me and Brian, she's a talking, yelling, laughing, signing maniac! :)

Signs

Starting last week, Maia, Cara and I joined a baby sign language class. We tried a few signs a while ago but it has been several months since Maia learned (and promptly forgot) the sign for "more". The class inspired us to get back to it and we were surprised to see how quickly she took to them!

We worked with her for an evening and by the next morning, she was asking for more with the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for "more". As if she were thinking to herself "Now that I know how to ask for more, it would sure be nice if I could ask them for water.", she picked up the sign for water within two tries. Soon after, she tried the sign for "book". That one is still a bit rusty, but we are getting to know it. Since then, she has asked for more food, more water, more bath (using the sign for water), more tickling, and more of her book.

This is a whole lot of fun. I kind of wish we started doing this earlier. There is a lot of research that suggests a baby of Maia's age has cognitive development that progresses far past her ability to vocalize the words that she WANTS to say. In other words, her vocal chords are not as developed as her brain. Signs are much easier for the baby to use to communicate with us. By encouraging communication, we are bolstering her self esteem as well as (hopefully) preventing her from getting frustrated with her lack of communication skills.

It has also been a really great bonding experience for us. You can tell that she gets a real kick out of being able to communicate to us.

We will be attending our classes for several more weeks (8 more, I think). We'll see what comes of it!

Thoughts About Stuff

(Just FYI, the above heading is a new designation in this Maia G blog--the entry that doesn't have anything directly to do with Maia's development. If you're not interested in that sort of content, go ahead and just jump over any "Thoughts About Stuff" posts.)

This doesn't really have anything to do with parenting, but there was an interesting article in the New York Times this weekend about the decline in the middle-class phenomenon known as "trading up." I like articles like this that explain how an economic downturn is affecting us in observable ways.

This article hits home to us here in the Genisio household; we did, occasionally, take a trip over to Williams Sonoma for kitchen goodies in the old days (circa 2004 or 2005) when we were living large and childless on two incomes. :) I don't miss that, however. Well, I do miss the tasty samples that they always used to have at the Somerset mall store on the weekends!

This article also gestures toward something that I've seen very distinctly in only a couple of places: New York City, and (to a MUCH lesser degree) Birmingham, MI. The article refers to the retailers it's discussing--Nordstrom, Coach, Williams Sonoma, Tiffany--as "mid-range" luxury goods. In Joanna's neighborhood in New York, the Upper East Side, the level of wealth is so incomprehensible to the vast majority of Americans that this true luxury is something beyond our scope. It's not even something we see. I'm sure, when one attains that level of luxury, Williams Sonoma is just another Sears, and Coach is the same as JCPenney.

Anyway, like I said, this has nothing to do with parenting (at least directly). Brian and I might be making more detours like this in this blog here and there as the development of our baby into a BIG KID spurs us to think about parenting in a larger context (such as, perhaps, raising a kid on one income in a shaky economy).

Maia's words

Just for the sake of making sure that I'm keeping track of this stuff, here are the words that we've heard Maia say up to this point:

• Hi
• Bye-bye
• Uh-oh
  
• Dada
• Mama
• Thank you
• Book (Nana Dawn heard this one yesterday)
  
• Dog (for this one she barks, but it's clear that it's a "word" for her)

The interesting thing is that she's not saying all of these words at this moment. I haven't heard "thank you" in weeks, for example. They seem to move in and out of the dictionary in her brain.

Primary day!

From Doing Her Civ...

Today was Maia's very first voting experience (well, except for the in-utero trip to the polls in November '06). We went to vote in today's primary election at about 8:45 this morning, and Maia departed with her very own "I Voted" sticker. :) The voting itself wasn't the most exciting: it's probably not the most interesting thing in the world to see Mom color in an oval next to "Uncommitted." Whoopee! Thanks to the Michigan Democratic Party establishment for making my vote essentially worthless!

But anyway . . . it's the exercise that counts, right? At least this time it is. In terms of some of the things that I'd like to teach Maia, this ranks right up there as one of the most important for me (well, maybe not the most important, but it's up there). A sense of civic responsibility, an understanding of one's role in the democratic process, the profound importance of all that--I think that this stuff really matters. I know I'm more than a bit geeky on this topic, but I'm proud of it!

I have distinct memories of being emotionally involved in election results and returns as a child, basically from about second grade onward. I registered to vote in high school the moment that it was legal for me to do so. When various presidential candidates were making their way through East Lansing several times in '92, my parents were very supportive of my ditching school for several hours to go to rallies and such. All of these memories are good ones (although my candidate often ended up on the losing end . . . alas), and I really cherish the feeling of responsibility that it gave me, a feeling of involvement in a process that's really fundamental to what's good about this country.

So anyway, assuming that parenting is all about self-reflection, and thinking about which aspects of your worldview you should pass on to the next generation (which I think that it is, ideally), I really hope to impart some sense of all this to Maia as she grows up. So, that starts today.