Updating after a while.

It's been longer than usual since my last post, and we've been through some seasonal transitions as a family that give us hope that this rainy, cold spring is turning into the start of a warm summer.

• Maia had her first ever Last Day of School with her Triangle Co-op classmates. They did a cute little performance for all of the parents and other family members, and then had ice cream for a treat rather than the usual healthy snack. :) Maia's had a wonderful year at school--she's grown and matured a lot in the last nine months, and has transitioned into some behaviors and abilities that make her seem so much older. She's reading words and writing now, and she's built a great number sense in her brain that helps her figure out quantities and patterns in her world. She's playing interactively with friends her age now (rather than parallel-playing), and participates in complex imaginative games with large groups of her classmates. We are so very eager to see her go through another year at Triangle, and then she'll start Kindergarten the year after that. In some ways, it feels like she's ready for Kindergarten right now, but we know that another year at Triangle will be immensely valuable--there's no need to hurry things along.
• Eli's begun using verbal words in addition to all of his sign language words. He now has four: more, all done, bye, and hi. I'm pretty sure that he's also saying Mama, but that one is a bit less clear and contextual than the others. This is the same age--nine months--that Maia started talking; it's interesting at last to see our two kids follow a similar progression. They've been quite different in reaching their milestones thus far, but this one seems to be consistent.
  
• Eli has also started sleeping for nearly twelve straight hours at night more often than not. In all likelihood, that particular milestone will disappear again, but it's lovely while it lasts! :)
• Maia's begun her season of soccer on Saturday mornings just as she's wrapping up a winter/spring session of gymnastics classes on Thursdays.
  

That's a short update, and is enough for now. We spent the morning outdoors (at a big area Metropark), and we might very well find ourselves outside again this evening. I hear Eli waking up from his afternoon nap upstairs, so it's time to sign-off.

Nursing an older baby ... again.

Eli turned nine months old on Saturday! His growth and development have just taken off in the last month; he's been crawling for a while now, and now he pulls himself up to a stand on everything, he's started "cruising" from one thing to another, and he's started trying to climb the stairs. He's got a lot of strength built into his 27-pound body, and he's grown to over 30 inches tall. A recent development over the last week is the likelihood that he'll pull stuff over on top of himself if we're not watching closely. He'll pull himself up to a stand on a floor lamp or something else in the house that's top heavy, and you can see it sway and start to tip. Yikes!

It's been a challenging couple of months of continuing to nurse Eli, but I think we've made it through the toughest part. It's a phenomenon familiar to pretty much any Mom who nurses a baby past six months--the "I'll do anything except nurse, thank you very much!" attitude of an older baby that can be absolutely infuriating at times, and can be very challenging for a Mom who's trying to maintain a decent milk supply! About a month ago, Eli was so distracted, so focused on moving and exploring, that nearly every nursing session felt like a mini-power struggle. There wasn't a lot of warm and fuzzy breastfeeding bonding happening around here.

But, we made it through, and in retrospect I think I've found a new way of thinking about nursing an older baby that's been helpful to me. Maintaining breastfeeding through these challenges has felt like my first real process of discipline with Eli, in that it's been a process of teaching him about priorities and values. Ultimately, I felt like I've sometimes been communicating the following message: "no, Eli, seven-month-old babies don't get to make decisions about nutrition. Parents do. We have things to teach you." It's not that I'd force him to nurse at a time when he clearly wasn't going to, but I wouldn't substitute something else; waiting 20 minutes or an hour and trying again would almost always be successful.

I realize, too, that going through this has forced me to reach deep down and remind myself why breastfeeding is so important to me. I've been sick myself twice through the last month, and I've attended several births recently, and neither of those events is easy on my milk supply; it's taken discipline and time and energy to keep my supply up through it all, and there have been a couple of times where I've had to ask myself "Why am I still working so hard for this now that he's eight months old?" My own answers to that question are my own--they have to do with nutrition and bonding and immune health and tons of other things--and it's been interesting to remind myself of those answers at a time when I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'd have to. (During the first few weeks of a baby's life, most Moms ask those questions all the time--it's been illuminating going through it again with a much bigger baby!)

Too busy

So there's that familiar pair of words, "too busy," that so many of us wear like a badge of honor or an albatross around our neck. It's one of my least favorite pairs of words, and it's one that I listen to with a veritable boulder of salt at my disposal--it needs more than the usual grain. I believe down to my core that we are almost never "too busy" to accomplish what actually matters to us--it's about priorities and decisions, not about being too busy. We do what matters to us at the time, and we don't do what doesn't. Period.

The month of April has made me pause and take a deep breath and say "thank goodness that's over." I don't like that feeling, because I don't like the feeling of being happy about the passage of time. That generally means I haven't been mindful enough, haven't taken care of myself enough, and haven't enjoyed enough the mundane, ordinary awesomeness of my daily life. I would like, as much as possible, to look back on a day and say "wow, that was full!" with a smile, rather than "wow, thank goodness that's over!"

There were too many days like the latter in April. We had a nasty stomach bug blow through our house to begin the month--everyone got ill but Eli (hooray breastmilk!!!!), and Brian's sickness struck while he was out of state at a conference. I was sick for three days right smack dab in between two clients' births (which were six days apart from each other), and Maia caught it, too. My exercise routine was messed-up, I had to focus on maintaining my milk supply for Eli (not easy to do through dehydration and insufficient calories), and Brian had to come home early from Colorado to get himself back on track.

Not the best way to begin a month!

May is about hitting the reset button. It's time to re-prioritize time with the family, time outdoors, exercise, preparing healthy foods, earlier bedtimes, and keeping our family life in order in a way that took a hit last month. I'm awaiting the birth of a client's baby soon, after which I don't have another client until mid-July. Brian doesn't have another out-of-state conference on the calendar at all! Maia's preschool year ends in a couple of weeks; that will be another relief, another item to remove from the weekly calendar for a while. We've taken on the position of President of our preschool next year (Brian and I will share Presidential duties) but our obligations for that role begin before this year ends, and so that's the only item I can think of that's increasing in intensity right now rather than decreasing. Phew!

So, my pledge to myself and to our family is this: with the advent of warmer weather, here are the things I'd like to be "too busy" doing in May:

• riding bikes
• going to the park
• reading books
• going to bed early or late--whatever works!
• watching Maia build forts and write stories
  
• visiting friends
• wearing flip-flops
• running
• going to the Farmer's Market
• drinking coffee at outdoor tables downtown
  
• watching kids' soccer games
• helping Eli learn to talk and walk
• planting vegetables
• helping Maia do science experiments
  

I guess we forgot ...

... how tough it can be to have a baby who's 8-9 months old. I could have just flipped back through this blog about three and a half years to find our posts about Maia at this age, and her sleep regressions, and her obsessive moving and crawling and climbing all. day. long. But I forgot. (Here's one of the posts that I could have read, for example.)

Eli's been brewing a real crawl for several weeks now, but he clicked into it last week and now he's crawling everywhere. And then, just this morning, he pulled himself up to a stand on one of his toys in the playroom. He's doing both of these things about a month earlier than Maia did, but in the same rapid-fire succession.

From Mid April

Our sleep is lousy right now, but I know that we'll get through it. The biggest challenge for Brian and I, it's fair to say, is finding the energy to exercise amidst all of this sleep deprivation. I know that regular exercise would help with my energy level in general, but it's been hard to muster enough get-up-and-go just to get my running clothes on, tie my shoes, and get my butt out the door.

Seeing the light

From April 2

• We can feel the winter coming to an end. Such a relief! Ann Arbor had one of its snowiest winters on record, and we felt it! It felt far too much like a hibernation period for my taste; I think it's fair to say that we're all very eager to get outside, to get moving, and to get some fresh air. It's only about 50 degrees out as I type this, but I have many of the house's windows open just for the sake of hearing the sparrows in the trees outside.
• Brian and I have both taken the warmer temperatures and drier ground as a sign that wintertime inactivity must end. Brian's riding his bike to work again and jogging in the evenings sometimes, and he's started to train for a triathlon later this spring. I registered for the Dexter-Ann Arbor 10K run on June 5, which is a distance I've never run in a race before. I have a lot of 5Ks under my belt, and my longest distance run ever on pavement was about 7.25 miles back in my Royal Oak running days, just before my pregnancy with Maia ... but I'm most definitely not in that sort of shape right now. I'll get there again, though!
• I've started to move lighter clothing items to the front of our closets, and on Saturday I went shopping at my favorite second-hand store (Children's Orchard) for Maia's and Eli's spring and summer clothes. Eli has already begun to outgrow some 18-month items and is moving into the 24-month category (not always ... kids clothing sizes are weird); there's no question in my mind that buying new stuff for him at this growth rate would be, largely, an unnecessary expenditure of money and resources. (I think that way about kids' clothes in general when it comes to my own shopping habits.) I don't want to sound ungrateful--I always appreciate clothing gifts that we are given, always, new or old or handmade ... but as the main doer of laundry around here, I just don't feel like buying new myself. The stuff at our "second-hand" place is often new or almost new anyway! :)
• My Mom and Dad booked our summer vacation cottage at Glen Lake (near Glen Arbor and Traverse City) for August 6-13, so we'll be up there for Eli's first birthday! This year, I want to tackle the Sleeping Bear Dunes; I can't wait to see the look on Maia's face when she sees that natural wonder for the first time.
• I attended a birth a couple of weeks ago, will be attending another one any day now, and have two clients due in the month of May. Four births between late March and late May--wow!
• I haven't shopped at Target in three weeks. :) My Mom gave me a little book for Christmas called The Better World Shopping Guide, and I'm using it to refine my shopping habits and to stop going to some of the worst corporate offenders (on things like environmental protection, human and animal rights, union-busting, stuff like that) as much as I can. Not surprisingly, Target is at the bottom of the list with regards to a lot of that stuff. We all know about Walmart and Sam's Club and the like, but many of my frequent stops for necessities aren't much better (if at all). So, day by day, it's a matter of adjusting my habits. We have a local REI, two Whole Foods, a fantastic Farmer's Market, lots of local grocery stores, and small businesses on every corner and down every street that don't exist anywhere else. I can say goodbye to the "big box" chains with relative ease, and it's time to put my words into practice and just do it.
  

Eli, the sleeper?!

Eli is learning to sleep! (Thank goodness.) He's seven months old now and is finally getting to more nights where he wakes only once during my normal sleeping hours (10-ish PM to 6-ish AM). This is a huge accomplishment for him and a huge relief for me.

Learning how to help Eli learn to sleep has been a brand new process for us. Of course, he's a different person from Maia, and so he doesn't sleep like she did. That's self-evident. He's such a cuddly baby with such a big personality--nighttime wakings have sometimes been a process of convincing a charming, chatting, big-eyed Eli that it's not time to hang out and talk and play. I'd say that that's the primary thing that we've had to teach him.

The primary thing that he's had to teach us is that he knows when he's hungry. I know this might seem simplistic, but all of the various "cry it out" methods of sleep training--especially the ones that demand that they be implemented with very young infants, younger than three months--seem to me to hinge on the idea that babies don't have anything to teach their parents about individual nighttime needs and habits. We've had to learn from Eli that his nighttime food needs aren't textbook. He's still off-the-charts in terms of size--he's weighing-in at around 26 pounds at seven months, which is still that nonsensical "100th percentile," I think. He wasn't born at that percentile, so I didn't have signs from the very start that hugeness was probably in his future. I believe firmly that without nighttime feedings, he would have failed to thrive (and I do mean that medically, the official diagnosis). His caloric needs are remarkable, far beyond what we experienced with Maia. It feels like this is his body's path, his individual growth trajectory that's a part of his DNA. I really believe that if we'd tried to "cry it out" early on with Eli, we would have ended up in the hospital with a dehydrated, undernourished baby.

I know that parenting so often is about choosing strategies that feel right to you, and then finding "evidence" to support your decision. I know that's what I'm doing here, and I put "evidence" in quotes for a reason. There's no science behind it either way as far as I know--cry it out or not--no peer-reviewed, double-blind studies. This is purely anecdotal, and, to quote my favorite old adage about research: "The plural of anecdote is NOT data."

St. Patrick's Day

Last night, before bed, Maia told us: "Tomorrow is a special day". We asked why and she continued. "Tomorrow is St. Patrick's day. There will be a rainbow and if we go to the end of it, we will get a pot of gold!". We kissed her on the head and said good night.

This morning, she was all ready to see the rainbow. Of course, it was a beautiful sunny day and there was no rainbow to be found. We explained how the rainbow and the pot of gold was a story -- a joke, even -- and that the only thing you do on St. Patrick's Day is wear green. She wasn't terribly fond of that answer.

Maia proceeded to go upstairs and pick out some red clothes to put on. I asked what she was doing and she said: "This is what I think of St. Patrick's day".

Ha! Looks like we have a bit of a smart ass on our hands :)

Maia

Another parent at Maia's preschool relayed this story to us this morning:

Maia's teacher, Mariann, is working on helping the kids in class recognize their written names. She has all of their names on cards, and during one of their two daily circle times, she'll hold up the cards and say "Whose name is this?" (or something like that), with the goal being that each child will say "oooh, me!" when he/she sees his/her name come up.

Apparently, though, Maia is preempting all of that. She's jumping in and reading everyone else's name, one by one.

Now I'm left to wonder what else she's reading without our knowledge. Hmmm ...

Siblings

From Early September

From January 11

My sister Katie is in Michigan right now--in East Lansing, preparing for a pre-bar-exam-exam--and it's hard for me to stick around here in Ann Arbor while she's just an hour up the road. Life and work obligations have dictated my being tied to home yesterday and today, but if it weren't for that, I'd hop in the car and take Maia and Eli to E.L. with me so we could hang out and ruin Katie's ability to cram for her test. :)

What an amazing gift it is to have a sibling. I'm thinking about Maia now, and how we upended and (potentially) messed-up her sense of her place in the world by bringing Eli into it. My goodness, how beautifully she's handled it! When I think about her as a person, when I ponder her identity that's deeper and more profound than just a "kid" (the lifelong identity rather than the developmental one), I think that the inherent goodness and kindness that she shows toward her little brother is one of her greatest attributes. It makes me grateful to know her. It's a beautiful thing to see--those of you who've seen it would surely agree. Maia's just a phenomenal big sister. It's a habit now for Eli to gaze over towards her when they sit together in the back of the car; he knows that the chance she'll want to entertain him and make him laugh is pretty high. Just this morning he was snuggled up under the covers in our bed as we were all collectively starting our day, and Maia climbed in bed with him and put herself between him and the edge; "I'll protect you, Eeez. You won't roll off!" she said.

She's never once shown a bit of hostility or anger or jealousy towards him. Perhaps it will come later, I know. But no sign of it yet, after nearly seven months.

I opened this post with a bit of reflecting upon my own sisters because all of this gives me pause to consider this question: what did my parents do right? What did they do when we were children, and what did we all do when we've grown up, to forge these bonds that have remained strong despite distances of hundreds or thousands of miles? What do I need to do for my own children? What can I do to help them create this remarkable gift together, as brother and sister, for themselves?

Ultimately, what can I do to build upon the goodness and generosity and kindness that's already there?

Joanna and Katie and I can go months without seeing each other, we can live hundreds of miles apart, and yet when we are closer together, the bonds are right there. We argue and disagree and revert to old yucky patterns sometimes, but it doesn't matter--the tension fades (or sometimes even strengthens the relationship!) and that strong wish to sit and talk and spend time remains. Over coffee, via Facebook, over a bottle of wine or on a drive to the airport--I cherish the time so deeply, and this time with my sisters is one of the greatest gifts that my life has given me. We've navigated some very rough spots that lasted years, and I think we're stronger for it. I'm not of the mind that the entire relationship needs to be smooth or easy--in fact, I think the relationship that I have with Jo and Katie is a reflection of one of my deepest-held life beliefs: conflict, if navigated effectively and respectfully, is necessary and essential for strong relationships. Conflict demonstrates our mutual individuality.

I've come to realize that investing time and energy into effectively parenting Maia and Eli as siblings to each other is one of the most important goals I hold as a Mom. How can I help them nurture the care for each other that, as of right now, seems to be innate? Eli smiles and laughs when he sees his sister coming in a way that he reserves for her alone. That's a hell of a spark of something essential. Thank goodness for it.

Life is good!

Spring is approaching quickly. We can feel it here in Ann Arbor--warmer days, melting snow, and more days of sunshine. I'm certain we'll get at least one more big snowstorm before the winter is wrapped-up for good, but that's OK. We all can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

How are we? Good!

• Preschool has been such an enriching experience for Maia. Just this week, for example, she wanted to have Eli as her show-and-tell on Monday, so I brought him in midway through the morning and sat with him on my lap in front of the class while Maia proudly showed-off her little brother. It was quite charming. Then, on Wednesday, a local dentist visited class and taught the kids all about healthy teeth and foods. Maia's been talking about caring for her teeth ever since, and she now insists on brushing them multiple times a day.
  
• Eli is happily digging into solid foods. This week, he broadened his repertoire to include Zingerman's Roadhouse's grits, roasted chicken, and Brian's delicious risotto. We didn't go through much of the process of making baby food purees and such this time around. While we do have some cooked and frozen veggies in bags in the freezer, he's already moved-on to eating bigger chunks of stuff.
  
• Eli also added another sign into his list: "water." That brings his total up to four signs.
• We got a spring windbreaker jacket for Eli recently, and we had to go all the way up to a 24-month size to get one that we thought would fit all season. I think that he weighs about 25 pounds (using our bathroom scale as an estimate).
  
• Maia's added some great words and expressions into her own language usage. She loves to use the words "ordinary" and "recognize" lately, and recently said "We should do this again sometime!" (to Aunt Katie, as if they were on an Auntie/Niece date.)
  

Awesomeness.

Brian was feeding Eli some banana just now, and he seemed generally displeased and impatient with the whole process. He wouldn't sign "more," and didn't seem interested. At one point, Eli paused and looked over at me across the table, and then he looked at his hand and made the sign for "milk." He didn't want banana--he wanted milk! :)

Just in case you haven't picked this up by now: we love baby sign language! That's the first time Eli's ever signed "milk," and the first time that he's been able to directly communicate that he wanted something that was not immediately in front of him. (Well, it could be that "milk" is a synonym for "mama" for him right now.)

"The Republican War on Women and Children"

Well, hello, inflammatory blog title! :) This phrase has been passed-around and is percolating in a lot of my regular internet news/opinion sources lately, and it's really started to feel true-to-life rather than hyperbole. Let me list some sources:

• House GOP drafting legislation to "modestly ease" oversight on toy makers with regards to how much lead is in their products.
• 10% cuts proposed to the budget of the WIC food assistance program. (The link provided is labeled as an opinion piece, but the numbers are there.) Just for the sake of recording it, "WIC" stands for "Women, Infants and Children."
• The much-more discussed elimination of funding to Planned Parenthood (passed the House, most likely will not pass through the Senate, yet). I will repeat what's already been repeated: it is already the case that federal funds--taxpayer money--cannot go to abortions at Planned Parenthood. That's been the case for a while--the Hyde Amendment was passed the year I was born, 1976, and other limits like it have passed since then.
  
• House GOP members are supporting toy makers in their quest to block the creation of an online resource for finding reports about injuries to kids because of toys and baby gear.
• And, finally, just recently Michelle Obama dared to talk in public about what can be done--legislatively, that is--to support breastfeeding moms. Well, prominent GOP members were up in arms!
  

And this isn't new: the United States is one of only three (out of 181) countries surveyed that doesn't offer any mandated paid maternity leave. Our colleagues in that designation? Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. Now, that news isn't new, and so it's not as pertinent to this discussion of trends in the current climate--but, in some ways, I believe it underlies all of this and establishes expectations and a theme. Mothers and families receive the message loud and clear, from the very start, that they are on their own. There will be no helping hands, no assistance, no support. Good luck!

(As an aside: It would be just as easy, these days, to talk about a "War on Working People" or a "War on the Poor" or other phrases like that, and I believe they are just as real and valid. I'm focusing on this area specifically because this is the nature of this blog. It's a place for me to process my thoughts about parenting issues, both on the level of our immediate household, and in a larger sphere.)

This is NOT about the so-called "Mommy Wars." This is about things that would benefit all mothers and families, regardless of their own individual home/work balance issues. Many of these things, in fact, are specifically geared towards supporting mothers who work outside of the home: legislation for breast pumping facilities and time, paid maternity leave, and WIC funds for low-income working mothers are the first that come to mind. I think we can all agree, can't we, that FMLA's twelve measly weeks of unpaid maternity leave time is a joke, particularly when compared with the rest of the world? I am a part-time working mom whose life wasn't impacted one way or another by this policy, and even I can see how pathetic that is. Again, it's not about "stay at home" vs. "working" (that useless dichotomy which is so imaginary in real life)--it's about an economic and legislative war on the things that make life possible and feasible for all of us!

Finally, bringing all of this home for me on a personal level is this: while it makes me sad to say it, I thank my lucky stars that I'm not a classroom teacher right now. I don't think I could handle the political and economic assault on my fellow women as well as the brewing assault on public employees. I've said it for years and I still say it: I think teacher tenure, collective bargaining, salary steps, job security, good health benefits and good retirement packages are over. My guess is that they will be largely gutted and/or gone before Maia and Eli graduate from high school. Is it a coincidence that teaching is a "pink collar" job (as in, dominated by women)? I think not.

Maia the Science Kid

• We were talking about food chains in the car on one of our drives home from downtown. Maia got home and proceeded immediately to the bathroom, where she settled in to do her business. After a couple of minutes we hear her little voice coming through the door, and she says "Actually, Mama, another word for food chain is ecosystem."
• She laid out a picnic on the kitchen floor for various members of a food chain, using her plastic and wood play food items. The herbivores had a plant-based line of options, the omnivores had both meat and veggies, and the carnivores had bologna and bacon.
  
• She was watching the film Ice Age today and informed us that "The place that's north where it's very cold? That place? Another word for it is 'Arctic.'" :)
• There's a saber tooth tiger in the movie, and she told us that she learned at the museum--where she took a recent trip with Papa--that a saber is "a long, sharp tooth!" I guess the museum has saber tooth tiger fossils? Papa would know for sure.
  

I love Maia so much I can barely hold it.

Life these days

Holy cow, the last two weeks have been so busy! I could go into a list of what we've been up to, but it's not particularly compelling in list form. To put it briefly: obligations of family and multiple jobs have consumed what feels like all of the time we usually have together, just the four of us. I attended a birth and had meeting after meeting, and Brian's had high levels of demands on his time from clients as well as a few conferences and meetings to attend. It will all slow down on Tuesday next week, after I've finished my teaching obligations on Sunday and Monday and Brian returns from his all-day conference in Detroit today.

This is nothing new. It's not news for families all over who deal with similar demands on their time. It's challenging to get through it just the same, particularly with a teething, night-waking baby and a four-year-old with preschool and gymnastics and visits with friends to schedule.

But, to take a deep breath and get to the bottom of it, I arrive at this: this busy life we're leading is due to the growing momentum of our work and family lives. Brian would never say it this way, so I will: he's really good at his job, and his expertise and thoughts are much in demand. He has a lot to say, and a lot of people who want to listen. It's been so very cool to watch his career grow from my vantage point. My work life grows increasingly busy and full, too--I'm booked for all of the doula jobs that I can take through September already, and I'm mentoring future childbirth instructors, planning to begin teaching breastfeeding classes, and working on a few articles to submit to journals, blogs and magazines.

All of these various webs and strands of our work lives reach into all hours of the day; work issues for both of us can arise from Facebook posts and e-mails, and my work obligations can come out of nowhere in the middle of the night ... literally. It can be hard maintaining boundaries sometimes--keeping work where it belongs. Neither of us has a conventional 8-5 job, and sometimes I think it would be fair to say that we'd yearn to have that on weeks like this. But not really. We have such passion and enthusiasm for what we're doing; it's that energy that keeps us going through weeks like this when we barely see each other and we're doing "tag-team" parenting the majority of the time.

But, it's time to take a collective deep breath now and let the tension go, because next week is going to be so much easier. :)

A big leap for Eli

Eli has started signing! Just like we did with Maia, Brian and I (and big sister Maia, too) started using baby sign language with Eli at around four months. We've stuck to repeated use of some very basic ones: more, eat/food, and milk. This weekend we saw the first moments of "payoff": Eli began signing "more" during mealtime, asking for more of his sweet potato. :) He'll bang one hand on his highchair tray, but it's very deliberate--he'll make lots of eye contact and give a couple of bangs on the tray with his right hand, and then he'll stop and smile or laugh. That was where it all began.

Now, just a day or two later, he's already made some leaps in communication--rather than just banging on the tray with one hand, he tries to reach over with his right hand to pat the top of his left hand! So cool! He also started to sign "eat/food" after "more"--he'll bang on his tray or on his left hand, and then he'll bring his right hand up to his mouth.

This flurry of baby signing activity is a bit earlier than Maia started, but I attribute that minor difference to our collective family comfort with the process. Having been through it once and watching how wonderful it was for Maia's ability to communicate at a young age, we're confident and at ease when we use signs, and I'm sure Eli picks up on that.

I love this so much--I think it's such a fantastic way for babies to understand as soon as possible that they can communicate. They can express their needs and wants and we will actually respond. We know that babies get dexterity with their hands well in advance of dexterity in their speaking muscles (tongue, lips, etc.)--we're giving them the ability to "speak" before their little mouths are able to. But their brains are so ready! :)

Six month stats

We had Eli's six-month and Maia's four-year appointment today with our family doc, and it was uneventful as always. Eli's stats are:

Weight: 24 lbs. even
Length: 28.5 inches (same as four months)
Head circumference: 18.7 inches

He continues to be off the charts with his weight and head in particular--his length is now barely "on the chart" in the 95th percentile. Thankfully, his weight curve has begun to flatten a bit, which is a gift in particular to my aching back and my milk supply. :)

He's now getting his vaccinations on the normal AAP schedule, after seeing many months of no allergic or feverish reactions to any of his shots. Both Eli and Maia had shots today, and, unfortunately, we've now hit the age with Maia when there is a lot of build-up and anticipation before her vaccinations, and a lot of fear associated with them. Fortunately, though, she's all done now until she's about eleven years old! Phew!

We're skipping the routine nine-month well-baby visit because of Eli's continued excellent health and general robustness (that's a way to put it). Our family doc suggested it--she said that with solid, healthy, breastfed babies and without "first-time parent anxiety," she's more than happy to pass on the nine-month appointment. :) Have I mentioned how much I love our doctor? So, we won't see her again for six months.

Just so I can keep it handy

Here's the poet Kahlil Gibran, "On Children":

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

A quick update on a snowy day

It's a quiet weekend around here, mainly because Maia is away. :) She's spending a couple of days at Nana and Papa's house, which makes it strangely peaceful around here (well, except for the stretches of time when Eli decides to screeeeech!!!). I have a class to teach this afternoon, and Brian has preschool-related activities tomorrow (they're turning the kids' indoor climbing structure into a "beach hut" for these cold winter months--it's a surprise for the kids, so Maia doesn't know about it yet). After that, Maia will return to Ann Arbor with much celebration and fanfare, and we'll be going to our friends' house for dinner.

In other news:

• Maia finally started her gymnastics class this week, after last week's lousy weather derailed our plans to drive all the way to the west side of town. She had a "stupendous, divine!" time (those are her adjectives, not mine), and was very focused and attentive during her class. The class is small--there are only four other kids in it with her, which is similar to the number of kids she had in her various swimming classes. Gymnastics will go for another 18 weeks, and then we'll be fully into spring and ready to start playing soccer with Triangle Co-op's team! :)
• Eli is getting stronger and more active every day. He's sitting up solidly and well on his own now and doesn't fold over into what looks like a yoga pose when he's trying to sit up. He seems to be mostly on his way to crawling--he gets everything off the ground except for his knees, and he is able to scoot backwards. This is a bit of a surprise to me; I thought, with his size, he'd be likely to take longer than average to get to these points of physical development, but he doesn't seem to be.
  
• Eli and Maia both have these strong, BIG personalities, which makes our daily life eventful and sometimes loud and always full of laughs. Maia adores her little brother, and he seems to adore her. When they ride in my car's back seat together, I can look into my back seat mirror and see Eli staring at her, his eyes wide, with a smile of anticipation on his face. She'll play Peek-a-Boo or make silly noises, and he seems to hang on her every action. She calls him "Little Eeeez" still and wants to hold him, help him sit up, and help him play by fetching his toys. She's really eager to help us with the process of getting his solid foods ready, too. I think she gets a kick out of joining in that ritual rather than just watching me nurse him all the time. She's been a tremendous big sister; six months into it, I don't think her transition into older sibling could have gone more smoothly. We are so appreciative of that.
  

What's up with us

We're moving along through this very cold winter, hanging out, going to work and meetings, cooking, and generally enjoying ourselves.

• Maia starts gymnastics class at the Michigan Academy of Gymnastics this afternoon. Her class goes for about 20 weeks, and she's been talking about it nearly incessantly for a couple of weeks now. The day is finally here ... but, of course, as I look outside, it's snowing like crazy right now and the class is all the way on the west side of town. The drive over there will be interesting. Wish us luck! :)
• Eli had his first taste of solid food last night. We saw some good looking avocados at the store last weekend, and so we bought one and thought we'd give him the chance to have a taste. He also tasted banana that I mashed a bit with a fork. I think that both of us are really backing-off from the idea that this a milestone that he must undertake at the six month point; we'd both like there to be less of a process and more flexibility and fun about it than that. I'm sure we'll probably make mixes of baby food and freeze them and all of that--but not yet. The vast majority of his calories are still coming from my milk, and will for many months to come.
• Eli and I worked together over the last several days to get my milk supply back up to where it needs to be. He nursed a lot and I brewed a lot of my "Nursing Support" tea and focused on drinking more water throughout the day. I still don't have a lot of surplus--when he drinks a bottle, he can put away 10-11 oz. at a time--but I'm definitely on more solid ground with regards to meeting his needs. Phew!
• All of our local public schools are having their kindergarten round-ups in the next couple of weeks, which has started me thinking about being there ourselves a year from now. Ann Arbor has open enrollment for kids who live in the district's boundaries (as we do), and so I think it's likely that we'll be doing some deep pondering of where she'll begin kindergarten in the fall of 2012. Brian and I are going to be thinking long and hard about what school will best fit her academic, social, and emotional needs. I bet I'll start going on tours of various schools after their kindergarten round-up processes are over, probably within the next two or three months.
• Work continues to go beautifully for both of us. Brian has conferences and talks to attend through the springtime, and I'm already booked with doula clients through April (I'm starting to interview for summer clients, too). Brian's slated to write another magazine article soon, and I'm considering going through the process of adding Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC) to my credentials so that I can begin teaching breastfeeding classes. Work life is busy and multi-faceted and always changing ... and good!

And, just because it's awesome, here's a picture of Eli enjoying his avocado wearing nothing but his diaper. It was just easier that way. :)

From Eli's first solids

Yet another post

Sorry for the flurry of posts in the last couple of days--there's just a lot I want to record. This one will be pretty quick; I thought I'd write down a few of the things Maia did today.

• At school, when she discovered that they had a book about Jupiter in the classroom, she asked her teacher, "Ms. Mariann, do you have a book about Mercury?"
• Also at school, she gave a mini-lecture on predators and their place in the food chain to her classmates.
• While she had some free time to write and draw, she created two books with the words to the song "Doe, a Deer" in them. (The text she writes is still letter-strings, sometimes matching the sounds of the words, sometimes not.) Then, in front of the whole group during their second daily circle time, she said "Okay class, I have a song to sing." She proceeded to stand up near the teacher's chair, hold the book open as if she was reading it, and then she sang all of "Doe, a Deer" to the class, twice.
• She wrote a note to her Daddy today that said the following (again, in letter-strings): "Dear Daddy, I love you. I love you so much I can't hold it. I love you so much that you need to stay here all day long. You need to stay here and not go to work and not go to any conferences. I love you. Maia."