Birthday Morning

Scene: Marta's bedroom

Marta just woke up. Trevor and Lisa creep in.

T&L: "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to -- "

Marta: "NOOOOOO BIRTHDAY!" Thrash, wail, yell, scream.

T&L: "Um, happy birthday dear Marta..."

Marta: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Lisa: "Do you want to go open some presents?"

Marta: "Yes! Good morning!"

DOGGIES!

THEY HAVE A SWING! Best. Birthday. Ever. Refuses to open more presents.

Braggity Brag Brag Brag

After refusing to crawl until very, very recently, Little One started walking around the house today, literally following in her big sister's footsteps by crawling and walking in the same month. (Berit at 11 months, Marta at 12 months.) She's thrilled she's walking, and makes excited squeals and has the goofiest face the whole time she's upright. I predict full-on walking by Christmas. 

Marta is not like Berit was at this age in that Berit wasn't too curious about what was in cupboards and on floors, and about how anything and everything might taste. As soon as Marta gets a pair of fingers in her hands, she walks us over to all the cupboards at her level and opens, closes, opens, closes them, inspects their contents and wants everything to do with Berit's tiny treasures laying around the house. She walks over to electric outlets, touches them, tries to put things in them, and when she sees us eyeing her she says "NO!", mimicking our scorns. 

I'm getting excited for her birthday on Thursday, because finally something is all about her and not overshadowed by (deservingly cute and precocious) Berit. She's such a sweetie, and I couldn't be more pleased that there is a light at the end of the "hold her hands and walk her around the house hunched over all day" tunnel.

The Result of Too Much Bragging

It seems that one too many times I've casually slipped into a conversation how Marta can recite the Preamble or that she taught Berit to count in Spanish. OK, maybe not those things specifically, but I've definitely mentioned on more than one occasion that our Little One is a talker. She's been saying actual words since at least six months of age. And not tiny grunts of words, but annunciating appropriate word parts, like "Mar-ta" and "dog-gie." She has known her animal sounds for what seems like an hilariously long time -- I mean, she was meowing before her eyes could fully focus on a picture of a cat. Of course we thought she was a genius. 

And now it's all coming around to bite us in the butt because she's started only saying very basic words, like Mama and Daddy (though the Daddy bit continues to be an adorable DA-DEEEE!!!), smacking her lips for drink, asking to eat with "Num-Num," etc. The rest of her words are lumped into three general-use terms: Ball, Baby and Maaa (this final word being the sound all animals make). 

Just in time for her one-year checkup!

Marta And Her Personality

I love watching our little one develop. She used to be just a bundle of happiness and joy, but lately, at 10 months old, she's really starting to show a personality. Today when Trevor was feeding her dinner, Berit was pulling on the front of Marta's high chair. Marta didn't waste any time in telling her "Nah Nah Nah!" (No, no, no!), while pushing her hands off the chair. And when I nurse her these days, she bobs off and looks at me all goofily, and says "Baby bye bye" and waves toward the big frame we have above our bed with several black and white pics of the girls as babies in it. (We say goodnight to them each time she goes to bed.) When she does this, she smiles in a very comfortable way and I always expect her to give me a little wink, like it's our special time. (She also points to her source of nourishment and says "Ball, ball!") 

When she gets around the many babies her age in our social group, she tries to stick her finger in their mouths, then puts her finger into her own mouth, repeatedly, as if to say, "Look, we're the same! We have mouths!" She has absolutely no interest in her nose, and if I point to it she brushes my hand aside like, "Whatever, Mom. Check out my mouth."

Tonight while we were rocking, she started waving, and when I waved back, she clapped, like "Good job, you figured me out!" 

Like the other women in this family, she's really into shoes, and whenever she sees them she tries to dive into them from our arms. She just sits there and picks each one up, inspects it, plays with any laces or velcro closures, then moves onto the next one.

Her love affair with dogs continues, and just seeing a live dog in person isn't enough. She must make repeated contact with the dog, and knows that dogs lick and lives for it. Gross. But cute, kind of. (In stark contrast to big sis, who's afraid of all dogs.)

She is not yet crawling. I know. It's late. But she's nearly there; she just hates falling onto her belly and howls the moment her tum touches the ground. She's started standing for a few seconds at a time, and is doing the walking movements. I think she'll be just like B in the movement phase of her little life -- Berit crawled and walked in the same month, 11 months. 

And like her sister and cousins, she's oddly drawn to her Grandpa Doublestein -- "Pa-Pa," she says, and she babbles about him when he's not even here. Not that he's so strange to love, it's just not as if she sees him constantly.

She bleats out "MAAA" at all animals until she figures out what they really say. Of course, you might remember my previous post about books and dogs. This continues. She's terrified of the vacuum. She LOVES laying on the floor with the telephone pushing buttons. This isn't consistent for other button things, like the remote or toys. Just the phone, so sorry if she's called any of you and you heard of bunch of gooey, slobbery noises.

She still wakes up a couple times a night, she eats whatever we eat but doesn't eat lots (enough to stay asleep, anyway) and she loves whole milk. My plan was to try to have her weaned by 12 months, but I'm surprised that it's already 10 months -- and I have no plan to carry out this plan. So we'll see. But she certainly is a fun little baby to cuddle.

Books in a Life

This is the typical scene I greet each morning, after Trevor has gotten up with Marta around 5:30/6 a.m. (wonderful husband that he is) and spent about an hour hanging with her before bringing her in to me pretending she's ready to go back to sleep... but really he's just had enough of books. As a big, big fan of books, I never thought I'd want to ban books from my children. But Marta's obsession with them has led Trevor and me to actually move as fast as we can in a panic -- not in a funny, "Can you believe we're doing this?" way, but in an "OhmygoshmovemoveMOVE!" way -- to hide books before she sees them, lest we end up reading the $*&^#@ dog book four hundred times in one sitting. Honestly, if we stop reading books, she screams as if there's an emergency room-level injury plaguing her. It's so far past the "Oh, but that's so cute and smart!" stage. If the book has real pictures of dogs or babies, we're toast. If I bring a book into the car for her and God forbid she drops it, I had better pull over and fish it out and sit and read a few pages with her before continuing our journey or else I fear her shrieks will bring the fuzz to my bumper. When it started I was loving it -- my kids don't look like me, but they love books like I do! But now, oh, if only she'd start throwing her body towards the television instead I'd be pleased as punch. 

I don't have much room to talk. I'm also a book addict, but since having two kids I've sadly been more of a book collector. About a year-and-a-half ago Trevor took down our bookshelves and made a wall of built-ins to house my treasures, and it's my favorite thing about our house. I've already outgrown it, and I don't intend to slow down. I still have stacks and stacks of books I've started and haven't been able to get into because of one thing or another, and still more that I haven't touched but desperately want to. Every now and then I walk over to the shelves and just look at all the books waiting for me to read them. I love the way they smell. 

It stands to reason I suppose that I harbor secret fantasies of owning my own bookstore someday. Now that I write that, I'm realizing that it's not really a secret, and in fact the people at my fabulous local bookstore, McLean and Eakin, are probably so sick of seeing my face loitering and asking for recommendations when I'm not actively reading much that they might just hire me to make it all legit. (What a great plan!)

My friend Sarah recently started a book club, and I can barely describe how excited I was about it. I mean, I was literally giddy and couldn't wait to gather and chat with fellow readers. I didn't technically read the book, but it sounded really good from what my friends said. It was a self-help kind of book, and I just couldn't get into it. But before I left for book club, I perused my own shelves for ideas for our next book. I didn't want to arrive and have my friends decide that this was our first and last meeting -- I needed to be prepared. 

Here's what I considered: 

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (complex, crazy interesting love story)

Blessed are the Cheesemakers, Sarah-Kate Lynch (super easy, fast and fun read)

Midwives, Chris Bohjalian (we're all moms, and it's about delivering babies -- but possibly dead babies, so not good for this stage in our lives)

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (another crazy interesting story but also involves a dead child and I just can't handle that right now)

The Twentieth Wife, Indu Sundaresan (an empress who changes her empire and arranged marriages)

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (hostages, love interests, foreign languages, compatriots -- still one of the books I plan to recommend)

Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (the story of a hermaphrodite over eight decades -- the top of my list of recommendations)

The Red Tent, Anita Diamant (motherhood, Biblical times/tales, womanhood)

One Thousand White Women, Jim Fergus (a little hard to remember, but women who were commissioned by the government to marry Native Americans to help civilize them)

And a couple that I haven't read yet that I'd like to:

Interred With Their Bones, Jennifer Lee Carrell

Doctor Olaf Van Schuler's Brain, Kirsten Menger-Anderson

The Saving Graces, Patricia Gaffney

Fortune's Rocks, Anita Shreve

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer

I'm sure this is all riveting for you. Anyway, I was so happy that at the end of a really cool, productive discussion about the book, motherhood, homemaking and other relevant topics a couple of girls threw out suggestions they had, and everyone had high hopes that the book club would go on indefinitely. 

I got in the car and called home: Marta was awake and Trevor was kind of in a pickle about putting her back down. I don't care!!!! I had fun! And talked about books! Which, clearly, needed to happen. 

And by the way, I was so impressed with the conversation we were having. First we talked about the struggles we have in our every day lives and how they relate to the book. And that led into how we feel about certain situations and feelings (my dad is just groaning right now, I know) regarding motherhood and homemaking, and we were all kind of down on ourselves. And then suddenly we were talking about all these great, positive things about ourselves and our kids and husbands and homes... like maybe we just needed to hear that others are going through what we are. I know this is fairly basic in terms of moms getting together -- shared experiences and all. But it was still good and much-needed for some of us. 

And so, book club is good. I'm excited to add another paperback to my stacks. And perhaps, if I'm lucky, even read it this time.