Daddy/Daughter Dinner

Here's a little taste of dinner with Auctioneer Jim:

This was a much less physical performance than the one I mentioned in my prior post.  No spins until the joyful finale:



After dinner, Dolly gave Jim some serious kisses.  Should we be concerned about what she's learning at our babysitter's house?



The Hit List

Dolly has a hit list, and Jim and I are on it. 

Is it seriously possible that at this tender age, she is starting to hit?  Because that appears to be the case.  In the last few days, she has suddenly hit/clawed at our faces multiple times.  My friend Deb (who has a son six weeks younger than Dolly) thinks it doesn't count; they're too little to know what they're doing.  But Dolly's strikes seem to be deliberate and, possibly, born of frustration.  Then she cries when she gets in trouble. 

This turn of events is totally bizarre and makes us really sad.  Our little angel turned into a demon child.  We can't figure out where she would have learned to hit, but apparently learned she has.  Let the joys of parenting begin.

11 Months

Chow Mein Noodles turned 11 months yesterday.  She's still not walking, but she works on her agility by hurdling the wooden beam that runs along the bottom of the kitchen table.  The beam is just up to her crotch, so for weeks she's been standing up under the table, reaching across to a chair on the other side, and lifting one leg up and over the beam and then the other.  It's cute to watch her get on her tiptoes and then struggle to get her other foot all the way over.  Then she turns around, reaches over to a chair on the other side, and does it again.  It's a fun little obstacle course for her, although slightly dangerous.  (She has taken a number of spills.)  She makes her way down the table and then hurdles the beams on the ends sometimes, too.  She's really too tall now to play under the table, but occasional head bonks don't stop her. 

She's not very into baby food anymore and prefers to eat what the big people are eating.  Jim still gets baby food into her by doing spins and slides before each bite.  Last night he was also talking like an auctioneer, counting how many bites she had taken.  ("Let's go for 49, 49.  You might think that's a prime number, but it's not.  7 times 7, 49.")  It was quite a production.  She prefers bread products, bananas, tomatoes, cooked carrots, salmon (her dad's obssessed with salmon, so I guess it's only natural), oatmeal (the real kind, not the baby cereal), and avocado. 

She remains an excellent growler and is an easy audience.  Sometimes she does the cutest deep belly laugh.  She's learning to do "knuckles" and blow kisses.  She has a great wave and apparently now knows that waving goes with "bye-bye."  (After I bathed her this week I was saying "bye-bye" to her rubber duckies, and she started waving at them.)  She dances a lot.  Her favorite sound is still "dada," but she doesn't know what it means.  When she's upset she says, "mama."  She is not a snuggler, but I have gotten some amazing hugs from her recently - usually when I'm getting her up from bed.  Some lasted a long time, and I just bounced her and patted her and soaked them in until she finally moved.  She plays by herself pretty well and likes taking her books out of their storgage box, putting them back in, etc. 

She's got six teeth, and I struggle to brush them.  Jim usually doesn't bother to try.  One of her front teeth is gray, and I'm sure it's rotting out of her head. 

Sometimes when I leave the room, Jim tells her, "Mama's leaving, and she's never coming back."  I think it's funny, but maybe it's scarring her for life. 

The other day I was talking to Meiken Alexander (formerly Shupe), who's in my ward, about babies, handling multiple kids, and things like that.  I don't remember the exact context, but at one point Meiken said, "But you have the perfect baby."  I said, "She's not perfect.  She gets tantrumy.*"  Meiken said, "Well, perfect hair then."  That made me laugh.  I love that Dolly was (and apparently still is) so famous for her hair. 

*I am aware that "tantrumy" is not a word.

Halloween

We didn't do much for Halloween this year.  My lady friends tried to convince me how important it was that I dress Dolly up in a costume and take her trick or treating - just for the sake of photos.  Given that Dolly has no idea what is going on and would not eat any candy she was given, Jim and I rejected the advice and made no Halloween plans.  The Sunday before Halloween, however, was the monthly Wilson family dinner.  (Since Dolly's birth, we have been adopted into the Wilson family.  Karen Wilson is "Nana" and treats Chavalyn like one of her own grandkids.)  Karen had given Dolly a "My First Halloween" onesie and a Halloween card, which was very cute.  Dolly wore the onesie to the Halloween-themed family dinner. 

We were assigned to teams for pumpkin carving after dinner.  Trisha and I were paired up.  It turned out to be an unfortunate union, as neither of us is skilled in the art of carving.  We started with a combover, which we then decided to turn into the mouth of a Sloth (from Goonies)-like creature with a bow tie.  When that didn't look so great, we basically cut off his face to make a gigantic mouth.  The saddest part was that he didn't end up with enough weight in the front to be able to sit upright unsupported.  Neither Trish nor I cared the least bit how our fella ended up, but the inordinate amount of ridicule we received sort of put a damper on things. 

The last time we carved pumpkins, I did a little Jewish boy with tendrils.  Jim and Jeremy copied that idea, but everybody thought theirs looked more like Frankenstein than a Jew. 

Dolly with Trisha and my pumpkin, pre-massacre:

Trisha and I with our pumpkin, post-massacre:

Lights on (gaping-mouth pumpkin not featured; Jim's tendriled jack-o' second from the right):

Lights out (gaping-mouth man second from the right, Mr. Tendrils far left):

Despite the carving fiasco, it was nice to get into the Halloween spirit.  I ended up going in to work on the real holiday while Jim took care of Dolly and passed out candy.  I was surprised that I felt a little bit sad about not spending it together.  I'm looking forward to next year, when Dolly will be old enough to dress up and trick or treat. 

R.I.P., Mr. Giraffe (or Dolly's First Break-up)

I took Dolly in the stroller on a jaunt through the neighborhood, and I let her bring Mr. Giraffe along.  Later that evening, we discovered that Mr. Giraffe was gone.  Jim and I panicked.  Would she accept a regular pacifier at bedtime?  What would she do without her beloved Mr. Giraffe?  Jim bemoaned the fact that we had been so shortsighted as to own only one.  Of course we would lose Mr. Giraffe at some point!  We called two different baby stores looking for a replacement.  No one carries WubbaNub pacifiers.  Desperate, we retraced my steps in the car that night, figuring she must have thrown him overboard on the street somewhere.  But he was gone. 

Dolly took a regular pacifier that night without a problem.  Still, as soon as I could, I got online and ordered three WubbaNubs - a giraffe, an elephant, and a monkey.  (And they are expensive little suckers.)  Dalai was waking up once in the night during this period, for some reason, and I was giving her a bottle and then putting her back down with her pacifier.*  I had a terrible time finding the tiny, clear little pacifier in the barely-lit room, and I missed Mr. Giraffe as much as I figured Dolly did.  I was thrilled when the replacements arrived a couple days later.  At her next nap time, I put Mr. Giraffe II in her mouth.  She promptly spit him out.  We tried repeatedly for days, and she would have none of it.  She was suddenly completely over Mr. Giraffe.  Perhaps the pitch from the stroller was deliberate - a heartless and abrupt end to a beautiful relationship.  R.I.P, Mr. Giraffe. 

* Right around the time babies are supposed to stop needing to eat during the night, Chava started waking up once - usually between 10:00 and 11:00 P.M. or around 4:00 A.M.  She didn't wake every night, but it wasn't infrequent.  This continued for a few (several?) weeks.  She almost always took a bottle when she woke, and she is so tiny and eats so little during the day that I couldn't bring myself to ignore her.  I'll risk jinxing it and say that it appears of late that she has cured herself and is back to sleeping a solid 12 hours.  Praise her. 

D.C. Trip - Sugarloaf Mountain, Holocaust Museum, and the End

Thursday Bags took us to Sugarloaf Mountain.  It's only about an hour or so drive from her house.  I little bit wept in the car because of the beauty.  I don't know why pretty country places make me cry.  It's the result of the get-emotional-over-odd-things gene I inherited from Pod, I guess. 

We tried to picnic by the parking lot before we started hiking, but the gnats were disastrous - millions, swarming all over us.  I was trying to hold the babe with one hand and eat with the other, leaving me no hands to wave gnats away (not that waving was successful), so I ended up eating in the car.  Then we headed out on a five-mile hike on the White and Blue Trails to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. 

I wanted to take pictures of all the trees, and I did take pictures of many. 

  





Chao Lin fought off sleep:



We stopped to take in the view at White Rocks:



 

There were ladybugs and stink bugs all over us.  I've never seen so many in all my life.  Pod showed off three ladybugs on his arms:

Ever chillaxed as we hiked on:

 

Next, we made our way to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain:

 

 

Even the parking lot area was beautiful:



As we drove home, we admired huge, amazing houses in the middle of vast fields.  I tried to capture the beauty of the countryside from the car, to no avail:



Suffice it to say, I'd like a house there, and Bags wants to get married at Sugarloaf Mountain someday.

 

Pod had meetings Friday morning, so we ladies had a leisurely morning and then picked him up at lunchtime.  We ate at the very popular Nando's Peri Peri Chicken and then shared a shake for dessert from the next-door Shake Shack:

Mamo and Bags took care of Dolly the rest of the afternoon while Pod and I went here:

It was wonderful going with Pod because he goes slowly and reads everything, as I like to.  We didn't really have time to get through the whole thing before they closed; had to skip most of the stuff about the people who helped smuggle out the Jews and about the liberation (although I did get to read a little about how Jim's people, the Danes, saved the Jews).  That is the most incredible museum I've ever been to - the displays, the building.  I wished I could spend hours going through it alone so I could let myself sob.  The Holocaust is so unbelievable to me - that Hitler was appointed Chancellor and then within no time got Nazis appointed to pretty much all government positions, that he started killing people within months, that the Germans were all so willing to believe that Jews (who were only a tiny percentage of the population) and Communists were the source of all Germany's economic woes (rather than World War I), that Hitler marched through country after country and took them over so quickly.  And then there's what they did to the Jews and others.  The medical experiments.  The mass killings.  I lost it when I viewed the displays about the killing of children with handicaps or other problems (Ever has made me very sensitive to sad stories about children), the pictures of the starving Jews, the videos of executions, with the victims falling into mass graves they had dug themselves.  I just don't understand how that entire thing happened.  I still cry when I think about the things I saw in that museum. 

While I got depressed at the Holocaust museum, Mamo and Bags had a nice afternoon on the Mall.  It was very important to Mamo that she take Ever on her first merry-go-round.  Mission accomplished, although they said Ever was a little freaked out:

Saturday we girls went shopping at Tyson's Corner while Pod attended his meetings.  Dolly wasn't super-happy about being in the stroller, so I found it hard to do much shopping.  Bags found some good things, though, and then we enjoyed lunch in the food court.  Dolly participated in the meal by eating some of Mamo's bread and Bag Lady's wallet. 

We talked about going into D.C. Saturday night, but Pod was tired after his meetings, and I worried about keeping Dolly up.  So we stayed in and got ready to fly out the next day.  It was a wonderful trip, and I'm so glad we got to go.

D.C. Trip - Lincoln's Cottage

Wednesday we went to Lincoln's Cottage on the grounds of the Soldier's Home a few miles from the White House.  Lincoln spent about a quarter of his presidency there (mainly June to November) to escape the heat and distractions of the White House.  He first went to the site three days after his inauguration and was last there the day before he was assassinated.  He developed the Emancipation Proclamation there and commuted from the Cottage to the White House on horseback, often alone. 

Before the tour, Ever sucked on my delicious (and freckled) arm:

The cottage:

The tour guide was very passionate about Lincoln, and I appreciated her enthusiasm.  She told personal stories about Lincoln, including how he was impatient with and rude to someone who came to see him one night at the cottage - incongruous with the wonderful, kind man we think of him as.  He redeemed himself the next morning, though, when he apologized eloquently and profusely.  I was particularly moved by the fact that from one of the windows, Lincoln could see the cemetery on the property, where 30 or 40 soldiers were buried each day.  He apparently spent a lot of time pacing in front of that window.  The burdens he bore . . .

There's a lovely little museum by the cottage.  It was pretty quiet, so I let Too Cute La Rue roam around on the ground.  The few other people there must have thought we were very tacky. 

She particularly enjoyed the air vents and went back and forth between these two for some time:

Outside, she was fascinated with Pod's facial hair:

We posed with the man himself:

I believe this statue is life-size.  Tall fellow.

This is the cemetery on the Soldier's Home grounds, as viewed from the road on our way out: 

Cool place.  I'm glad Bags had tickets to use.  I'm finally starting Team of Rivals, which will be followed up by another Lincoln biography Mamo bought me at the cottage that was highly recommended by the worker bees. 

D.C. Trip - Baltimore Day

Bags, as the family's social coordinator, arranged for us to spend Tuesday in Baltimore with Gordon and Liz Bryson, friends from home.  (Mr. Bryson taught English and coached football at HPA.)  They moved to Baltimore a few months ago.  We got a tour of their super-fun, super-tall, and super-narrow townhouse and then headed with Mr. Bryson to Fort McHenry, home of the star-spangled banner. 

Chow Mein got cozy with Mr. Giraffe:

The fort:

The Dalai, extremely tired but excited about America:

The cute fam:



NOT the original star-spangled banner:

Place where they stored ammunition:

Doting on the Wee:

Chavez gets a lift up the stairs in her chariot:

Big guns:

(I think we learned that the British ships never got close enough for the Americans to hit them.)

It's nice visiting historical sights with teachers.  Mr. Bryson imparted all sorts of interesting information:



Mr. Bryson carried everything for me while Pod looked on.  Mr. B:  "Who, me?"

Dolly likes to work on her backbends when she's being held.  If you lean her back once, she'll keep throwing herself back over and over:

We went back to Brysons' for a light lunch and then walked with Mr. and Mrs. B around the harbor to the Baltimore aquarium.  Funny how the ladies and the fellas always split off:

Talking politics, no doubt.

The harbor was lovely.

Federal Hill:
 

Apparently Baltimore's allegiance to the Union has always been sketchy.  In 1861, Confederate sympathizers rioted when a group of Massachussets militia passed through Baltimore on their way to Washington for Federal service.  That riot is considered the first bloodshed of the Civil War.  Afterward, 1,000 Union troops came in at night during a thunderstorm and set up a fort at Federal Hill, cannons pointing toward the central business district, in order to guarantee the allegience of Baltimore and Maryland to the Federal government under threat of force.  (Thank you, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory.) 

The famous aquarium included large jaws (in which Mr. and Mrs. B posed) . . .

a dolphin show . . .

nifty jellyfish . . .

Cayman alligators (Mr. B said, "Cayman - where Romney keeps his money") . . .

and a cool, big shark tank of which no one got pictures.  We made it in perfect time to finish up just as they were closing. 

We ran into the amazing Barnes and Noble bookstore at the habor (former power plant) before heading back to the Brysons'. 



Brysons fed us a delicious crockpot dinner.  We chatted, took a group photo (instigated by Bags, of course), and then hit the road. 



'Twas a lovely day, and the Brysons were fabulous hosts.  There weren't even any skirmishes over politics!